Summer Storm

A brilliant lightning strike just across the river made me scrunch up my face at the impending clap which exploded a second and a half later.  I started to breathe again, marveling from the dry safety of the porch at the torrent which descended upon the yard, the trees bending against sheets of water and wind like soldiers forbidden to abandon their posts in a storm.

Earlier today in the muggy morning warmth I’d slipped out of bed and strolled naked to the shower in the woods – a portable hot-water-on-demand affair Ishwar had created some years before among the cedars south of the house.  If you walk at a certain pace the deer flies can keep up but have trouble landing.  And then I’m protected within the force-field of the warm spray.  Afterward I alternate drying off with whipping the towel about like a horse’s tail, imagining I’m a ninja holding the insects at bay.

Now I’m at the kitchen table listening to the receding thunder and peering out at the now more civilized downpour which creates a curtain descending from the roof, reminding me of that tunnel where you can witness The Falls from the inside.   

It is Summer, and the green surrounding the house has lost the fresh brilliance of Spring, still lush but beginning its slow progression to dullness until the burst of fall colour like a firework whose flash heralds the barren sleep of snowy winter.

I muse that perhaps it is witnessing the perennial rebirth of nature that leads to the foolish belief the same will happen to us.  But I, with only one life to lead, feel conflicted.  Part of me wants to break out, explore, find new adventures in other realms.  But I am seduced and tethered by this beauty; and fear that none who leave Shangri La can ever find their way back.