It started not with a sound but with a smell carried on a soft gust of air. We all know that smell, the scent of chilled, summer rain falling on warm ground. I love that smell more than any perfume that I have ever smelled, probably more than the scent of most foods even. It’s been months, nearly six of them since we’d last seen even a drop of rain. Two Oregonians going that long in the sun must be some sort of record. After the smell came the sight of large raindrops hitting the windshields of the cars lined up in front of Dashen Hotel. The air cooled almost imperceptibly, and the dust that'd been hanging in the air for weeks on end was pulled to the ground. A fresh, cool breeze has been this welcome few times in my life. We passed the storm sitting out at our usual table on their porch, drinking in the smell, the sight, and the sound as we drank up the last of our “jambos.”
The storm only lasted a quarter of an hour at most, but the impact has been longer lasting than that. It gives me hope that times are changing, that the shift in the weather is a foreshadowing of greater changes to come. I pine away waiting for the short but strong monsoon season that lies around the corner and the end of the first school year. I wait impatiently for when the storms fall over Fiche every day, when it becomes cold and the earth comes alive again. I look forward to days spent cooped up inside with my Kindle and 400 some-odd classic novels that need to be read. I anticipate power-outages that last for days on end as the flash floods knock over the power lines held up only by poles that are shoved into the earth as securely as candles in a birthday cake. I long for the moment when I see the green grass again and feel it pushing up through the gaps between my toes. The land is thirsty, and so am I.
How things looked 2 months into the dry season.
~Jessie
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