It Rained

It rained in the desert a couple of nights ago. I'd seen the lightning zapping the mountains to the north as I came out of the temple. It was hot. My truck thermometer registered 105, at 9:00 P.M. It's August...it's going to be hot. I drove home, watching the lightning skitter over the sky as it slowly advanced toward our house. I'd been home about a half hour, when the thunder claps started on our block. The windows shook, it was so close. When the lightning lit up the whole yard around the house, I opened the front door so I could watch without being out there in it.

Soon, the sidewalk began to receive huge splashing raindrops, but very few of them. You could easily count them because there was enough space between each. I watched as each drop hit, spread out bigger than a quarter, and then immediately began to fade and evaporate until there was no evidence of its having been there. I realized the sidewalk was still so hot, that it took only seconds for the rain to dry up as it landed. I counted--ten seconds from splat to dry.

But then, the tempo of the rain picked up, new drops fell so quickly that I could no longer distinguish one wet spot from another. It started to drip off the roof, and soon it was pouring off in a stream. Roostertails of water flew from the car tires as people drove down the steaming street. In a moment, the sidewalk was puddling and a trickle ran off into rocky dirt so dry it couldn't absorb it for a few minutes.

The spicy scent of creosote and sage filled the fresh air that wafted across our street as the clouds unzipped. The leaves opened every pore to drink in the fleeting moisture, letting their pungent resins spread through the atmosphere. The splatter of the raindrops caused the palm fronds to wave gently and I breathed deeply the cool, fragrant smell of rain in the desert. The thermometer on the patio registered 88 degrees. It was 10:15 P.M.