Hello Friends! I don’t know about you, but I have been wrestling with some fierce blues this spring. There have been lots of moments of beauty and joy, but they have not lasted, arriving more like brief sparks than a sustaining light to alleviate what feels like gathering darkness in the world.
It didn’t help that I returned home from my road-trip to serious heat—daytime temperatures in the 90s and grasslands gone brown in our long drought.
And that the flood of grim news from around the globe hasn’t abated, whether Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Darfur, Haiti and other war zones; ocean temperatures staying high, coral bleaching; or the hatred and divisiveness in our own country. It’s hard to keep believing in the goodness of this existence when what I read and hear is so depressing. (Maybe I’ll start curating my news more carefully.)
And then, at dark on Sunday night, the thunder that had been rumbling all around us from towering cumulonimbus clouds finally offered up blessings to this parched landscape and my aching soul: rain.
First a few shockingly cold drops, and then a few more, and pretty soon a gentle, steady rain was falling, the kind of rain we used to get in April and May. The kind of rain we haven’t had this year at all. (Sound up for the rain in the video.)
A female rain, the Navajos call this, widespread and soaking, not the hard “male rains” that walk in on legs of lightning and pound the dusty soil into muddy torrents.
The air filled with the rich smell of petrichor, of life awakening from drought-induced dormancy, as aromatic compounds washed off the dusty, desiccated plants and rain trickled into the soil, rehydrating the tiny lives there to begin to respire and feed again.
The patter of rain in the darkness filled my heart with the sound of hope, an audible reminder that life is more resilient than we tend to believe.
That when our hearts break open at the pain in the world, what those cracks free is the love we’ve been guarding.
That love is our superpower, the vital force we need to heal ourselves and this living earth.
And, oh, how I needed those reminders!
Unlike the dribs and drabs of rain we’ve gotten since the moisture tap turned off in late January—half a tenth of an inch here, eight-hundreds there—brief rains that raise hopes but don’t deliver, Sunday night’s rain kept coming.
I could hear the gentle tapping on the skylights as I fell asleep. The rain had quit when I woke briefly in the silence of the night. But when I woke again before dawn on Monday morning, the rain had resumed.
I opened the windows to let in the fresh and cool air with its heady moisture while I did yoga. Then I donned my rain parka and stuffed my hair under a bill cap and set off to walk the high desert in the rain, relishing in the subtle pops and burps of the soil respiring oxygen and inhaling moisture, taking the life-giving liquid deep into its pores.
Gentle rain pattered on my parka, slipped down my yoga tights, dampened my dusty leather boots. The ground was soft underfoot, no longer powder-dry. The deep cracks in the soil hadn’t mended, but they were softening.
Rain darkened the peeling bark of the juniper tree trunks, waking the algae inside the colorful lichens that live on the tree bark. Raindrops pearled on every branch and leaf, on every twig and petal and grass blade. Wildflowers drooped under the weight of the water, small bees sheltering inside.
Neon-orange jelly fungus sprouted overnight, summoned by the rain, moss clumps gleamed green on the bare soil between plants; and the bunchgrasses, seared to straw by the drought, already showed the first pale glimmerings of life.
Tomorrow’s forecast calls for a return to unseasonable heat and dry winds; our summer monsoons, the thunderstorms that traditionally keep the desert alive in summer, aren’t due until mid-July.
But for today, the desert and I are replete and hope sings in my heart. I am grateful for rain, and for the reminder of the power of love and life, always ready to awaken and grow with even the smallest encouragement.
May gratitude open your heart too, every day. Blessings!
A delightful post. Thank you. I too am feeling the downward spiral of so much bad news - wars, hatred, political dysfunction, climate and biodiversity crises, drought… Rain, especially the female kind of rain you describe, is such a gift - to the land and to our weary minds.
“Female rain” kind and life sustaining. Glad the world is in better balance for a while.