Desert Rain! Oh How Sweet it is!

"Whoever Can See Through All Fear Will Always Be Safe" Tao Te Ching.

Ah!! The monsoons have arrived! I was hoping they would come before I left and today was the day. It has been raining since 2:30pm this afternoon and it is 10pm and it is still raining. Oh how sweet it is -- rain in the desert. I have never appreciated rain as much as I did today.

I was at the healing centre all morning and about 2 pm decided to go downtown to say goodbye to a few people I had met before I left and pick up a few things for my trip tomorrow. This time I took my camera, having found my battery charger the night before after it had hid itself away for the past 2 weeks. My first stop was to be the bank across from the square, but as I had my camera in hand I drove by the Aikido dojo where I have been training for the past 2 weeks to take a couple of photos before heading off to the square. There were a couple of large dark clouds hanging low in the sky and a few rumblings but there had been rumblings and the occasional dark cloud for the past week. I had been told that the monsoons were coming but truthfully did not expect to see rain before I left.

When I first arrived in Prescott just about a month ago the days were very hot and the nights quite cold, much like you would expect in any desert area -- not much of a difference as in the Wirricuta desert in Mexico. It got cold enough at night that I was sleeping with a blanket and with the windows closed. Not so of late! After I returned from the Sundance I noticed a shift in the night temperatures. It was getting warmer at night because of the increasing cloud cover which didn't seem to affect the daytime temperature, which was still hot but at night it was no longer that delightful cool then quite cold, in fact if it got to delightfully cool you were lucky. It was more of a balmy almost tropical summer night.. much like it had been in Jamaica when I was growing up. In fact some nights it was so warm that I found it hard to sleep. I was told that the balmy night weather had to build up for days until finally it rained. I kept hoping for the rain.

Well, it arrived today and has it ever rained. I arrived in the plaza downtown with many heavy clouds and took photos of the square trying to capture the light. I went into a spiritual bookstore hoping to find a present for Daisy the guardian of the woman's altar and 'bumped into' two of the people I had planned to see before I left. As I left the bookstore the rain started ... Those big, fat delicious raindrops that you get in the summer and oh the smell of the wet earth. It was amazing after so many weeks of hot dry weather. I stopped at the local natural food store to stock up on some items for my trip and by that time it was pouring. The heavy sudden down pour that we always used to get in the afternoons in summer in Jamaica. Ahhh.. and me with no raincoat! There I was running into the store like I used to run in the rain between classroom in high school.

Feeling the fat warm drops on my back and head. What a delight. In the store I again 'bumped into' another one of the few people I knew in Prescott. When I got everything I needed and was at the checkout counter the young woman who was on cash was looking longingly outside as the rain poured down. I'd love to be out there she said, but I am stuck in here. Everyone in the store seemed to have a smile on their fact. Rain in the desert where there has been a 12 year drought is enough to make even the hardest hearted person smile. As I went outside with my bags of groceries there was a woman sheltering from the rain under the eves. She asked if I was from here and did I know how long it lasted. I laughed and said I wasn't from here. Just then a man came out the store so I asked him if he was from here and how long the rain lasted. He said it usually lasts 20 minutes but that he was not going to let it keep him here because you never know how long it will really last.

I followed suit and ran through the rain to the car. It felt great to get wet in the desert. As I drove back to the healing centre I noticed so many puddles that had not been there only 2 hours before and the smell of the fresh wet pines. Oh how sweet it is. It doesn't get any better than this. I was later told by a local woman who came to the altar for a ceremony that the day before she had called her grandchildren in Vermont and they had told her that they had done a rain dance for it to rain in Prescott and her grandson had sent one cloud to her. Well, what powerful kids, I said. That one cloud must have picked up several friend's on the way because when it arrived in Prescott, it rained from 2:30pm till the wee hours of the morning...

Lessons learned: 1) Rain beautiful rain. Give thanks for the element of water in all its beautiful forms. 2) Our prayers are answered, 3) Innocent children carry powerful medicine.

staywell and travel with Spirit in Beauty and Truth, Spirit Traveller.