Memories of Rain

I recently went camping with friends and had a wonderful time hiking and exploring The Needles District in Canyonlands National Park. It’s only two hours from here and this is a nice time of the year to visit the desert. The temperature was moderate and it was easy to hike for hours. It even rained one afternoon which left puddles on the slick rock and happy lizards running across the trail. One evening I decided to sleep outside under a large, dead cottonwood tree. It’s broken limbs stretched out over me and were silhouetted against the night sky. As I lay there, my head tucked under the sleeping bag, I heard it starting to rain. I reached out my hand to gauge the amount and found nothing. The sound of falling rain was coming from the tree. The sound continued all night whether there were gusts of wind or stillness. I don’t know if the sound was made from dried leaves rustling or insects eating away the inside of the tree. All I know is that it was comforting - like the old tree was telling stories about its memories of rain.

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The apartment is now a temporary storage facility.

Glad someone knows what they are doing.

Week 12
Back at the Harmony Barn, the electricians were busy. When you move into spaces that have already been built, you don’t think much about where the outlets are or where the light fixtures are placed. You hope for the best that there are outlets and light where you need them. And if you have ever lived in a home built in the century before the last one, you can appreciate modern electrical codes. It was interesting, and caused a bit of anxiety, to stop and really think about where to place light fixtures, how high they should be and where to locate switches. What if you did it wrong? Luckily, we had an experienced contractor there to help guide us. One day, while we walked around the interior spaces making these kind of decisions, it started to rain. The sound of the rain hitting the metal roof was loud but not threatening. Very different than the sound of rain on the roof of our house. I wonder if the horses who used to occupy the space found comfort in the sound like I did sleeping under the old cottonwood tree.