April 20, 2021
Western North America
Before the wind blows, the morning will hang raw and sunny. There is a bare urgency that hangs in the leaves of a cottonwood looming over everything here. The trembling leaves now might tell us the waiting is nearly over. The air has a stretched stillness to it, about to break time’s pace open to its whims.
We will participate, now into this day hammering into every crevice of the bank, through every stone, and seeping into our bones. The sun still shines warm and bright, the sky can easily pull you away.
Later, thunderstorms will build over the hills ringing the valley, deepening our backdrop, focusing our will into the hope that change will happen. This will turn, and leave us again in stillness. And we move with the water’s rhythm, pushed by wind into the next bend. Here we might stop and see the first of evenings bugs pulled upward, or tumbled along the water’s steady surface. A trout might even take a grab here or there, teasing us with their sudden disappearances after we think we’ve figured them out. We lean and ponder, search water, feel wind, absorb a big sky alive with later afternoon. This is where all else falls away.
Shaken Rain 