Surprised by Rain

Without and With Mountains.

So here I am, busily typing away at one of the zillion projects I have going and suddenly I smell something you just don’t smell here in Tucson all that often: rain.

I just had to tell you.

I look out the window next to and behind me a bit and sure enough, it’s raining! Not a lot, but enough to release a little of the oil on the Creosote leaves.
If you haven’t been in a rain storm in the Sonoran Desert, you’re missing out. There is a smell here–a loamy, earthy…well, darn it, a green smell that you just don’t find anywhere else.

If it were a perfume I’d bathe in it.

It’s not a green like you get in New York or Missouri, where it’s so green and wet that it’s almost like lichen in your nose. This is a desert green. It’s not as bright. It’s more subtle, more tenuous, and more stunning because of its rarity. It’s not as showy. Not in your face. It’s austere. It’s got good manners and it doesn’t stay so long that it wears out its welcome.

Weather men say that this summer will probably be hotter and dryer than ever. It’s so sad. When I was a kid (say 1985 or so) the summer monsoons were still running on a clock. Between 3 and 4 every afternoon, July and August, you’d see all the clouds that had built up over Mexico that morning roll over you and dump buckets on your head. The desert would cool off, remain pleasantly humid, and smell like heaven. You’d go to restaurants with dripping patio umbrellas (or dripping ceilings if you went to Rosita’s) and you’d enjoy the cool, enjoy even how useless swamp coolers are when it rains.

That doesn’t happen any more.

How long does it take to get to work by bicycle?