I’ve tried my best to keep my hands off rescuing this little essay from how it was originally written. I sense in it my 1973 self, lost in a grand memory, paying little attention to style or structure. Notice the two spaces between sentences. That was the style then. Notice too many adjectives, and that I used the adjective “clabbered” as a verb. Can I do that? I did. The essay is titled “Weather” in my collection, but probably it should be “Rain”? This is a test of discipline, to not tamper with these old writings I have falling one on top of the other for ten days. Here, Day Four.
“WEATHER” c.1973
I am glad the mountain cabin I knew as a child was rough-hewn and sagging. There is no doubt but that it was held together by character. No showplace builder would select its galvanized tin roof. But can the sound of a hard, driving rain be better than against metal? Affording finer things, many people avoid tin and opt for shingles. They pay well to rob themselves of a great gift, the sound of rain against tin. Full forte.
I spent many summer childhood hours in the back of a jamb-packed pickup, riding out steep roads with hairpin turns, squashed and sweaty, numbed and nauseous, eagerly escaping the Phoenix heat. That escape, weighed down by various combinations of horses, dogs, relatives, siblings, friends, mothers, grandmothers, and jostling supplies delivered us to the small mountain town of Pine, Arizona.
We always stopped at the General Store, slammed the white screen door there, bought Blackjack gum, arranged for a mailbox, walked off lingering stages of mountain sickness, drank an Orange Crush or a green bottled Cocoa-cola, then bounced through the final five miles of a rutted dirt road to our small cabin in the forest, wishing against the soft drink.
A final long hill down to the cabin’s drive permitted a view of the tin roof, a flagstone walk my mother laid while she was supposed to be resting and recovering from illness, and the outhouse close to the cabin but too far for any child to dare in the dark woods. One great leap down from the cabin’s front porch? A swift cold creek.
There I am on my favorite bolder in the creek. On the back of this photo I had written, “Creek. Cold!” This was where my brother tricked me into eating a salmon egg.
Ceremoniously, children leapt from the truck, or flung open doors if we were in a car. We smelled the heavy scent of forest pine, bared our feet, and spun our liberated bodies deliriously till ordered back to civility. We hurried our share of the unpacking then pursued all that is involved in being young, and loose, in the great woods. Few, indeed, were the forces capable of driving us to seek shelter.
True, during the day the cabin captured us with food traps. But only our bodies were caged. Our minds, our imaginations and ambitions, waited impatiently outside. Once a day, darkness shouted its unwavering intention to rule. We returned to the cabin. But again, only our bodies, for in darkness we sat before a roaring fire, roasted marshmallows, imagined and talked of the next day’s outdoor ambitions. The cabin cradled our sleepy bodies.
Only one force ever succeeded in wholly handing us to the cabin. And what a force it was. Unpredictable in its severity, it nevertheless always approached with warnings of impending purpose.
To a child’s nose, to my nose when I was a child, the first warning arrived. Smelling the advent of rain, I looked up, and my eyes confirmed the message of the nose. Oh, how I loved what my eyes told me! A churning sky clabbered up a new message. Yellow hues gave way with little argument to varying tones of rumbling grey. The familiar forest breeze turned its back on children and demonstrated new authority as it stoked up a storm. By the time I recognized the mood of the wind on my skin, my ears were alerted. Rain sent before it every instrument needed to herald its coming. The result was a frightening, overwhelming orchestration of smell, sight, and sound, and I loved it.
This marvelous wet force on the move urged every faculty of sense to dash madly for safety. I nearly burst with what rain did to everything in me, and everything around me. The forest grew dark, and wise, and too mature for noisy children’s play. Run! And we did - to the cabin.
Inside, the fire crackled like never before. The hot chocolate took on more flavor than I deserved. Blankets used at night for cover suddenly became toasty companions and pounding rain caused the most mundane of conversations to become strategic and prolonged. Even our bedtime prayers, guided by the women who guarded us, seemed fresh washed and more appropriately clean before God.
Memories of rain and that creaking old cabin whirl in my mind. Some memories cushion my inner life like a comforter folded over and over and privately fallen into. Others jump out to be shared, like a picnic blanket where all who will listen are invited to join me! The melodies of rain learned early in childhood thrill my adult ear. The tap, tap, tap of nature’s baton informs me that the concert is about to begin. Do not make me miss it. No longer a child, rain now draws me to my warm, high-beamed living room, to a special overstuffed chair, a small companionable fire, hot tea steaming in a mug resting on the hearth, an especially good book and being alone. Rain says, “Think, but do not work at it. Read, but only for pleasure. And listen. Listen.”
