Revival
Oh, we are a parched and thirsty people! We had our first serious rain event of the season on Monday, and jubilation rang out through the canyon. Texts from the neighbors started coming in: At least two inches! Could be 3! 4.9?! Maybe a microburst?
Vocabularies were suddenly splashed with words like moisture, quenching, and revival. Puddles and pools were pointed out, and sparkles of wetness where dust used to be, and the trees perked up conspicuously. The mournful feeling vanished, and the chronic sense of foreboding about fire abated (albeit briefly), and every heart was lifted.
I am not exaggerating. Coming on the heels of the heat wave, it was particularly welcome and delicious.
Meanwhile, a bird has been repeatedly flying into a window, banging against the glass over and over. He has been doing this for days, and he has become so familiar to me, I’ve given him a name: Maximilian. It just suits him somehow, absurd and performative, a name with peaks and points, a name that struts. The rain gave him pause, but he promptly returned.
Why is Maximilian doing this? Isn’t it the very definition of insanity? An Audubon Society website tells me that the root of this behavior is territorial. “When birds select a nest site, the surrounding area becomes their territory,” it says, “and they defend it vigorously.” I surmise that when Maximilian saw his image reflected in the window, he mistook it for a rival, and he has been seeking ever since to drive away the interloper. But both Max and his rival are very persistent, and there is no sign of either letting up.
It seems a metaphor for something. Futility? Delusion? Passionate devotion? And it imparts a kind of wackiness to the general ambiance around here, but it in no way diminishes the enchantment, especially now, in the wake of that magic-boosting rain.
Yes, it rained! Already, blades of green grass are poking through. The fragrances of sage and chaparral infuse the air, and the leaves are glistening. Mud has returned–a river of it came rushing down a hillside and turned the road to muck. Yesterday a large absorbent limb at the top half of an oak tree broke off with the weight of the water and came crashing down. The cows are feasting on freshened pasture, big with calf, wide as ships, and moving slowly.
It rained. There was a new clarity in the night skies that followed, the open skies of a washed-clean world. At one point we lay on our backs looking up into the heavens. We saw stars and a satellite, and what I think was a very bright planet. (A young person helped me get back up, and that’s the way it is these days––but I’ve decided that the rewards of star-gazing from a horizontal position and occasional on-the-ground picnics are worth the challenge of getting my stiff limbs upright again.)
It rained, and everything was in the air: monarch butterflies and dragonflies and a boisterous covey of quail and the tiny jeweled hummingbird who hovers at the honeysuckle and the great rolling clouds and the high-stepping dreams and the things we were promised and the things that we feared and the things we are hoping for still.
It rained—drumming away the disillusioned voices, wetting down the worries, fleetingly hydrating our hopes. A bit of water, and we’re gushing with gratitude, and bullish on life, and all of our maybes drift toward why not. That’s how we are: even just a little encouragement can turn us around and set our boats in motion. We’re hard-wired to be hopeful, and we keep on making the best of things. Now autumn has come to the northern hemisphere, a handsome buck with branching antlers is boinging up the hillside, and Maximilian keeps banging his beak for the sake of his progeny. It rained. And we are new again.