A storm coming down canyon between the Rio Grande Pyramid and the mighty river.
I sit here writing to you in my usual place near the fire, yes, a fire even at home inside my log cabin in the summer. It is chilly here in the early morning hours as I sit here awaiting the security of sunrise over Finger Mesa. Even in summer the horses will await it too, find it, standing like sundials with their broad sides facing the warm glow, a blessing each morning. Some things are not taken for granted, ever.
Mornings we look to the west and see nothing but the clearest of skies, not a waft of a cloud, a still even blue. By noon, up canyon a mass builds and swells with a growing bank of deep purple and grey, laden with promise of sweet, sweet rain, alive, escalating, intensifying.
The ground has been parched, cracking, grass crunching beneath our feet. We know it is but the surface drying out; beneath which is still moist and rich and full of life, as assured by the greenness of the trees and meadows and hillsides surrounding us. The storms build and pass, blessing or foregoing us directly, perhaps letting lose but a canyon away, as we watch the veil of cloud move east from the Divide, a gentle silky sweep in the sky that we watch in anticipation. Will it grant us with moisture today? Will we find ourselves soaked in the saddle again?
The heavy and humid air of the approaching monsoons is charged with electricity, alive and powered by forces so beyond our abilities, our understandings. And when it lets loose, unleashes its fury, dumps its treasure on our grateful lands, we revel in the moisture, the cooling, the beating sound on the metal roof, the smell of the sweet dampness on the sun soaked soil. The creeks swell and run milky brown, as small rivulets run down the slightest of grades on every hill, path, and pasture.
But for now, it is blue. It is calm. There is no indication of what may be, probably will be… except perhaps for that single puff of a cloud at the edge of our view above the mountains to the west… perhaps the promise of what will build and grown and turn once again in the fiery wet storm that may briefly pass us over again today.