The Night The Arizona Desert Sighed

Let the rain kiss you.  Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.  Let the rain sing you a lullaby.  ~Langston Hughes

While some parts of the United States have had way too much rain and devastating floods this past year, Arizona has been dry as dust itself.  The  Arizona climate sees very little rainfall and it's getting sparser as the years move on.  So far this summer we've seen temperatures as high as 114 and it's early in the season.

I laugh often when someone says "at least it's a dry heat" well let me tell you folks that is no consolation in a region that sees rain so infrequently we can't recall in our memory bank when the last one happened that wasn't a literal 5 minute spittle from the sky. 

Arizonan's looked forward to Monsoon season where it would rain everyday like clockwork.  You could set your watch and by 4:20 p.m. it would grow dark, the winds would whip and the rain would pour for close to two hours, everyday during the season.  The Monsoon doesn't really come to us much anymore, no rain does.

June 30th 2011 it's the wee hours of the morning at 2:30 a.m. I know something is up because my body starts aching really bad and my joints start to scream.  This means the barometer is rising.  How do I know just by this?   I have Fibromyalgia and many conditions that end in -itis so, any drastic change in the barometric pressure sets my body to nothing short of crazy.

Anyway, I manage to drift off and at 3:20 a.m. I am roused from a fitful sleep by a grumbling, a low rolling guttural sound of none other than blessed thunder.  Then.....

              



 a thunderous crack and lightening lit up my bedroom.   My heart races with excitement and my husband shot straight up in bed.  "Is that thunder I hear, is it raining"?  hahaha I could feel his excitement because I was up and out of bed and literally hit the floor running pain and all to the front door.  Then it hit, the lovely scent of rain meeting dust in the air and dirt on the ground.  I flung open the door and.....  Sweet Mother Earth!  It was raining, I lifted my face to the sky with my arms held out to my sides and giggled letting the cold, yes COLD rain drops just fall on me and around.

With head tiled back and eyes closed I could sense, no feel the earth around me give into a deep, happy sigh.  I could feel my mesquite tree, which is a desert dwelling tree "lighten" up, you could see it's leaves curling upward toward the sky, the plants, flowers and grass perking up...it was a spiritual moment for this tree hugging nature lover and I could feel the sweet, happy vibrations of the desert around me.  The heaviness and burden of infrequent rain and being pounded by scorching hot days was lifted if only for a little while.

I mark this day June 30th, 2011 in my blog The Night The Arizona Desert Sighed.

On a note; you can water all you want in the parched dry desert but to the vegetation here it's not enough.  You can tell the difference in how your surroundings act with natural rain fall verses watering from a hose.  Have you ever noticed everything seems so much greener during and after the rain?

My best to you always,

Live Life, Laugh Hard, and Love Passionately