Pink Rain

Monsoon season in Colorado-- July is not like all the other midsummer years I've seen here. Usually by this time, all the green has become brown, the heat is set in, clouds and are rain sparse and the land becomes a tinder box: volumnous, brown and dry. I usually hide inside to avoid the scorching, unrelenting heat and landscape. Folks who've been here longer than I say that "now it's beginning to look like it used to."

Since the change in the weather and landscape, I've created an evening ritual the last few weeks: I don clothing that covers me against the mosquitos, spray on a green cloud of natural insect repellent and head out to the backyard to spend time with the sky and my garden.

I've been invited outside many an evening by the immensity of changing color and shapes above that these last moments of the day bring. As I walk out the sliding glass door onto the deck, I survey my gift and am delighted once more. Why is it I can sit and watch cloudscapes for hours as they metamorphose into all manner of hues and configurations....? The clouds tonight are gray with a luminous dripping pink-melon color, juicy and thick with droplets. Rain looks like it won't fall immediately, so I walk across the lush green lawn (made so by late afternoon downpours of the last few weeks) and plunk myself down in a corner of the garden, thick with weeds. From here I can focus on both the weeding AND enjoy the show.

This is my evening meditation: to sit on the earth, get it under my fingernails, find a rhythm with the pulling and coaxing of the weeds out of the soil, (trying not to be poked by the thistles I pull up), tossing them to the pile in back of me. Turn and repeat.

I am a sensualist, a tactile goddess. I love color, taste, oneness with the earth and living beings in my hands. Whether the contact is with my granddaughter's fingers wrapped around my pinky, a cat or dog's warm fur, green plants soon to bear fruit, the clearing of brush and trees on a ropes course or the long ago hewn and carved wood of my cello and bow under my fingers and embraced by my body, it all invites me into my essential self. This part of me drinks deeply and flourishes in the natural world. Tonight I am having a feast.

In "Desert Solitaire", Edward Abbey wrote:

"I am pleased enough with the surfaces - in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh, the sunlight on the rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind - what else is there? What else do we need?"

I crunch a tender, raw green bean and savor its taste. Honestly, every mouthful I'm blessed with out of my garden tastes and feels like it has 100% more nutrition and energy than ANYTHING I could get anywhere else. I was surprised to find the bushes bearing already, a treasure amongst the weeds.

I look to the West. Just above the crest of a group of indigo-gray peaks, the clouds are fire in the sky. I look up. A pink cotton candy canopy is spreading quickly above me. Drops kiss my face. I have to look twice as they fall on my shoulders. The kid inside me is giggling, expecting pink clouds to produce pink rain-- OF COURSE. The adult knows better, smiles, continues the rhythm of the weeding meditation, leaving the child to revel in her fantasy.

The gentle rain continues....and we smile.

Finally the light is dying, the show ended for the evening. The color on the clouds resembles the last breath of fading embers on the hot past of a fire.

I bless the garden, tucking her in for the night as I bring her gifts-- and my fantasy-- inside.