6 seconds

So here we are at 6000 feet, trapped in our tent on the south side of a Swiss Alp in a thunderstorm, yelling hail marys over the rain. We spent all morning climbing up from the valley to Verbier, a small mountain town near the french border, and all afternoon hiking to the foot of Mount Fort. Two days into our Alpinian excursion, both of us are cold and wet, exhausted from an 1800 meter ascent and the thought of thousands to come.
But the only thing that matters in a thunderstorm at 6000 feet is those terrifyingly clear, silent few seconds between the flash of lightning and the crack of murderous thunder. I remember being told on Boy Scout campouts how each 3 seconds of eerie silence was roughly a mile, and clinging to this rule, we painstaikingly calculated the distance between us and the strikes.
Peeking my head out of the vestibule, the sky seemed clear and calm in the distance. A wide frame of dark gray clouds surrounded soaring white alps of snow and black rock long vistas of dark green forest thousands of feet below. Fleeing the advancing storm in the late afternoon, we pitched tent next to the rocky foundation of an old cottage filled with knee-high weeds. The spot was the best we could do at the time, but with each advancing strike of lightning, we became more anxious.
"We should make for the cabin," Brett said.
Swiss trails had cabins staffed round the clock and furnished with restaurants, beds and hot showers. We preferred the free tent over the expensive accomodations, but with 40 pound packs, too much wet gear and trapped in the storm, the little cabin was looking like the Hilton. So we counted strikes and waited for the rain to let up. Six. Nine. Five. Eight.
A bright flash behind our tent and a simultaneous slap of thunder that shook the tent settled the matter for us: we were going.
When we strapped our packs on our backs, threw on wet socks and booked it for the cabin, raingear and all, we were inside of a cloud with 20 feet of visibility. We abandoned the tent at nine thirty at night when there was just enough daylight to see the trail. We yelled to each over the fall of the rain as we jogged down the trail, hoping to see a light. The cabin was a lot further than we thought. It was at least a kilometer walking, and we didn't know it then, but the last half of the trail was all rock and narrow, flooded trails.
Desperate and scrambling, Brett spotted a small house a few hundred meters down the hillside. We scrambled down and knocked on the door of a worn, white barn-like house.
Four startled farmers stared at us from inside. One of them must have been no older than 20, and cocked his eyebrows at me and shook his head. The other frogs(french-speakers) at the table, were older and stared at us with their mouths full of food.
The man at the door was Julian, a 35ish, brown haired man with hands like worn brown leather and broken english. Brett had hoped these cattlefarmers might drive us up the road, or at least let us sleep with the cows, but after two minutes of bartering with Julian it became clear he was not the viturous mountain man we had hoped.
"Just 30 minutes," he said, pointing to the road and into the black sheet of falling rain.
We thanked him and walked off. We were soaking wet by now and it was dark enough to see the lights of the towns below. Lost and out of options, Brett and I trudged back in the rain to find our abandoned tent. A flash and a distant rumbled echoed in the canyon.
"12 seconds," Brett said. "Storm's moving out."
We climbed back into our tent and into what dry clothes were left, and let the rain sing us to sleep.