A Road Less Travelled

It was in the evening. Tom was out helping a couple move and Elizabeth and I were watching a movie Elizabeth wanted me to see. Olympia wasn’t interested in our movie so she was curled up in the study watching something on the computer. The movie was just getting to the point I might have been drawn in when, boom, all the lights went out. I looked out the window and saw trees almost bending over in the wind. Well, without power we couldn’t very well watch a movie so we went on the porch to watch the storm instead.

It wasn’t raining right at first. The wind carried to us the smell of rain as it swept from unknown and mysterious places, past the house and off to where the wind goes when it’s outrun a storm. It blew through my hair, brushed against my skin and made me long for wings. But then the rain came.

It was like a wall of water, some ancient siege tower being marched down 10th Street. It moved with a stately and inexorable grace. On our side of the wall all was dry though much harried by the wind. On the far side of the wall torrential downpour held court. I only had a very few moments to appreciate this though because stately though the rain’s progress it was also incredibly fast. The wall of rain rushed at us and would have swept over us, adding us to its list of conquests if not for the porch we stood under. Even then the rain and the wind conspired together to get us pretty wet.

Elizabeth, Olympia and I stood on the porch watching the rain dance on the street, the wind rush along and the lightening play in the sky. Tom came home, expressed much concern about the refrigerator not having any power and had to go check on the popsicles and beer to make sure they wouldn’t spoil. It was decided that they were probably in grave danger and so we did our best to dispose of as many as possible.

It was a pleasant evening. We sat on the porch long after the rain had moved on to watch the lightening flash in the sunset, to smell the rain-soaked ground and to feel the last straggler of wind, now cool and carrying the rain like ocean spray, brush against my face.