Monsoon

the creatures and me

eyes wide, noses to the wind

dreaming of cool rain

July

This time of the year is spectacular where I live at 7,120 feet elevation, 40 degrees north latitude, 105 west, on the east facing slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, just below the Continental Divide. Small arroyos and larger canyons feed the Platte River watershed, which in turn supplies the Missouri then the Mississippi rivers.  We get an average of 18 inches of rain a year, though a few years ago we got that much in four days.  The most snow we’ve seen in 25 years up here is maybe four feet, but lately we are more likely to get weekly doses of less than a foot. It’s bone dry most of the time. Tinder dry. Crispy grasses like Georgia fat wood ready to ignite.  Ponderosas, Colorado Cedars, Blue Spruce, Aspens ready to comply. We live like kindling in an ecological-human game of chicken.  But from north of us in Wyoming down to New Mexico, this is monsoon season, and I love it.  Like clockwork, mornings are clear, calm, with blue skies warming quickly, then it gets hot.  After lunch, the sky darkens, forebodingly so, the temperature drops 25 degrees, the wind begins to swirl in gusts, then howls wildly, the rain begins gently, then turns into a deluge, sometimes with foosball-sized hail stones, and then as suddenly, perhaps no longer than 45 minutes, it’s over.  We are bathed in negative ions, the house is cleared of last night’s cooking smells, and we return to stillness.  With all 18 windows open, we exist within the enormous lungs of the Rocky Mountains, all of us gently breathing, then sharing an hour-long gasp of wonder and awe.

August

But not always. It’s been ten dry days or more, with temperatures around 100 degrees and less than 10% humidity. We have four wildfires burning out of control within a half hour drive and thousands are evacuated. Wildfire can consume an entire house in minutes. It’s edgy, with no rain. I’m packed and ready to go, my teeth are set, I sleep with ghostly dreams, I need a shower right after showering. I try to relax and seem normal.

Perhaps I have to admit to longing for permanence. Change is the truth, but I resist it. Our forests succumb to beetles, disease, and fire. Species go extinct. Native people who lived here thousands of years are a distant memory. My ancestors who arrived here 150 years ago are all gone. But I want my life and my house and my trees to be exempted from impermanence, from eternal change and groundlessness. I want it to rain and not burn.

Then, as if an answer to my selfish plea, the sky darkens and opens, the temperature drops fifteen degrees or more, ions flip negative, and, miraculously, it’s raining. It’s raining! Living in Western Washington fifty years ago, it rained often, and I saw it as an inconvenience. I took it for granted. Here, rain is a lifeline, a reprieve, a second chance, a rescue. It continues, softly, with Earth’s precious water saving us. The entire cycle and system are inconceivable, a mystery beyond our conception, awesome.

There’s no one to thank.

Just notice it.

How cool it is on my skin.

the monsoons resume 

two days in a row, the Earth 

exhales and we smile