It’s an old northeastern US folktale, that Rip Van Winkle wandered into the then-untamed Catskill Mountains and came upon a group of gnomes playing nine-pins. The sound of their game rolled over the mountain tops like thunder. That’s only the beginning of the story, but it’s the part that’s stuck with me.

My parents would tell me the story on nights when the thunder was so loud, and so close that the windows and walls of our house shook. It was all-to-easy to imagine that each thunderclap was the sound of a stone lawn bowling ball striking a set of pins, and that a host of supernatural creatures played games while we puny humans shook in our beds, afraid of loud noises.