Moody

We get rain, hours and hours of drenching rain, until the ditches overflow and muddy water creeps across roads, and then sometimes the sun comes bursting from behind the clouds, even as the rain comes dancing down into puddles and warm white mist rises from the melting banks of snow. All afternoon we had flashes of lightning, snapping through the windows as if some drunkenly happy giant was taking photos of my house. I love a good thunderstorm, even though a low pressure systems can give me a migraine, or perhaps I love that a thunderstorm often releases the pressure in my head. Up at camp in the summer, storms come chugging and crashing up the river, gathering strength as they travel toward us. When I am lying in a small nylon tent, I savor the rush of night air bending the flimsy walls of the tent, swooshing the branches of pine trees outside the tent, and the crash of thunder smashing up against sky with all that incredible of power.

During the muffled white quietness of winter, the only sound I hear at night comes from the wind chimes on my porch, a quiet melody played by the wind. Spring, on the other hand, comes barging into this part of the world like a teenage boy who moves restlessly from drum set to piano – swinging drum sticks, hitting cymbals, fingers racing over keys – and then switching on lights, opening the refrigerator, leaping back to the drum set, pouring juice, sliding onto the piano bench, changing his mind every ten seconds, his energy filling the spaces around him with big swirling crashes of music and rainlight and mud.