Rainy Reflections

That was the loudest crack of thunder I've ever heard.

There was a blink of heaviness where the energy shifted right before I heard it.

CRACK!

I thought the walls of this 100 year old Outback Pub would surely collapse under the weight of it. Now every sound has me on edge. Fight or flight, the adrenalin rush provided through our ancestry is never that far under the surface of our modern rationality.

I flip back, to the second loudest crack of thunder I have ever heard. Ten years old I was sitting in the front-porch of our house. We lived in a small town where the streets were dead long before the night closed in and the high-lights of your life were to be found either in the goings on of people, or the goings on of nature. I was fortunate, for a time, that the later was my preoccupation and my passion. Nature, weather, and I have always had, I felt, a unique bond, an understanding with each other. Fascinated by the magic and power of storms and the changing seasons, I used to believe that there was some consciousness behind it. It was in the way the rustling leaves spoke, or the wind pulled and twisted the snow into magnificent patterns, the changing colours, the white-cap peaked lakes tormented by invisible forces. These were gifts and signs to me, things for me to enjoy, and manifestations of states of mind I still can't express.

CRACK!

The second loudest crack of thunder I've ever heard broke the glass in the single pane window in our small front-porch. It was awe-inspiring as the thunder rolled on and on to what seemed at the time to be far and distant places, unreachable from my small childish universe. Then came the rain. A rain so heavy, so warm it's comparison is used for all rains that have come after it. I took to that that quiet street in the middle of the night and danced and splashed and welcomed the rain with outstretched arms, head up to the clouds, marvelling at the ubiquitous way it fell from the darkness. With no beginning and no end, it rushed down the street in rapids, flowing over my bare feet and into the storm drains, taking with it the debris, rubbish and heat of the day.

It's amazing and strange the moments that stay with you forever, the ones you think about again and again – or at least, every time it rains.