Last week we were working a landscaping job in an area tucked right up next to the mountains that when the wind blows it can rattle your brain to a position at the edge of sanity, but the first days we worked there were spectacular and the views nearly incomparable (if you don’t take into account our own views here at home). I became quickly enamored and could see, really, for the first time why so many people love to be nestled so close and intimate with the mountains, but on the last day we were there the wind came up, taking us by surprise and blowing tarps and irrigation parts far and wide. My love-at-first-sight senses quickly quelled to a flaccid, muttering distaste.
I don’t like the wind.
Our weather this month has been wet and windy and that often makes me feel less than cheerful. But it hasn’t always been that way. I was remembering, one particularly dreary day, of a distant day when I was in college. That morning a light but relentless rain drenched the world. I walked to my first class watching water droplets catch at the edges of my umbrella. Before falling the droplets danced with light it had, magically it seemed, collected from the dull gray sky. Then I saw droplets, also dancing with collected light, on leaves and fences. I heard the song of a bird as I entered campus and then paused and was granted audience by a robin standing beneath a pine tree trilling while it flashed its orange breast for all the world to see, though I was the only one who stopped to watch and listen. That little robin loved the rain and, so, I loved it, too. My heart sang for a moment with that little bird and as I started off again for class, I listened to its long and joyful song.
I shook my umbrella before stepping inside my classroom building and met a friend heading to the same class. She had driven to school that morning so I smiled and opened my mouth to tell her how beautiful the world was outside. But she scowled and said, “Isn’t this the dreariest day you’ve ever seen?”
