Free Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World by Leigh Ann Henion Page A

leans in and says, “I can’t hear very well. My ears still haven’t popped!” We’ve descended thousands of feet in elevation over two days, and the barometric pressure outside of his ears is greater than that inside. It’s a sensation that serves as a reminder that our bodies are constantly neutralizing our relationship to the atmosphere. But, sometimes, it’s hard to keep up.
    Alan’s mentor, scientist Julio Lescaburo, believed that unique barometric pressure systems, or atmospheric pressure, in the Catatumbo Delta are the origin of its namesake phenomenon, and Alan does, too. Nearly every morning, according to Alan and Julio’s observations, winds reliably blow off Lake Maracaibo onto the Andes. While aloft, they cool on mountaintops cold enough to host tropical glaciers. Then, just as reliably, in the evening, the changing pressure systems of the lake call the winds back, where the cool pressure system of the Andes meets with the warm, moist pressure system that has been simmering in sunshine. When they converge over the lake:
Kaboom!
Lightning.
    One popular counter-theory is the idea that high concentrations of methane gas over the lake somehow increase conductivity in the air. This idea, formulated by Ángel Muñoz of the University of Zulia, has been adopted by one of the Catatumbo’s most vocal promoters, Erik Quiroga, a Caracas-based environmentalist.
    Quiroga has introduced legislation that would make the Catatumbo lightning the first UNESCO World Heritage Weather Phenomenon. It’s a request that received quite a bit of international press when the lightning temporarily disappeared in 2010. The incident made the lightning itself seem suddenly endangered, though no one could reliably identify the threat. Alan maintains that the lightning’s disappearance was because of an El Niño that created drought conditions that extended the dry season, when the phenomenon reliably takes a brief annual hiatus. Quiroga, for his part, thinks deforestation and subsequent erosion along the Catatumbo River—which alters ecosystems—might have had something to do with the historic disappearance.
    During the phenomenon’s hiatus,
The Guardian
reported that UNESCO had no plans to declare the Catatumbo region a World Heritage site because “electric storms did not have a site.” But in the case of the Catatumbo, this isn’t true. It may transcend the terrestrial and our understanding, but if there’s one thing—and there may be only one thing—that’s known for certain about the Catatumbo lightning, it’s that it has a home. We’re almost there.
     • • • 
    “Welcome to water world!” Alan shouts as we enter the village of Ologa, home to 300 perpetual seafarers. We’re in a shallow, where houses are perched above the lake on wooden stilts. They look like water-walking spiders. Most of the unexpected structures are built with plank lumber, floors nearly falling into the lake-sea. Others are constructed of rusty tin and branches covered in bark that looks like elephant skin. The pre-Columbian homes encountered by early Spanish and Italian explorers weren’t all that far removed from what we’re seeing here today. They reminded the Europeans of the canals of Venice, Italy. This is how Venezuela, or Little Venice, is popularly known to have gotten its name.
    In the distance, beyond the stilt houses of Ologa, there’s a swampy island full of coconut trees. It’s roughly as long as a football field and as wide as a suburban street. Beyond that, there is only the flat line of the horizon, punctured by the outline of a distant oil platform. All around the village’s stilted homes, in what amounts to watery front yards, there are men standing in waist-deep water. They’re shaving in broken shards of mirrors, and some of them have chests covered in soap suds. Children splash each other below platforms full of frothy fishing nets. A woman stands in an open doorway, raising her hand in greeting.
    Alan lives,