There are heavy clouds hanging low in the sky making the green of the trees and grass, what green grass their is, greener. The air is thick with humidity and each inhale of moisture rich oxygen hydrates me without ever drinking a drop.
It is, in short, a miracle.
This is the third year of horrible drought, after five years of much lower than average rain fall. Last summer, there was no monsoon season. There were no clouds, just endless days of clear skies and searing heat. I prayed then for rain, but it was an afterthought. I knew, I believed, that this dry spell could not hold, but it did through the summer. And then the fall. And winter arrived without snow to ski even at the highest resorts. Spring came with days upon days of beautiful unusually warm days and nights without the dark, rainy, cold days that fill up the mountains and streams. Summer arrived with searing, dry, leaf curling heat . . .and this year, I prayed in a way I have only prayed when a pregnancy was going wrong—with my whole heart.
It’s interesting when we pray for something we have absolutely no control over. It feels almost futile, childish, and vain. How dare I ask for something like rain when the world is groaning under the weight of a pandemic and so much suffering it hurts your brain to thick of it? It seemed wrong, and yet, as I watched the trees I hike under and the bushes on the mountainsides turn prematurely yellow and brown and shrivel and die, I found that I dared.
I began my prayers timidly, shyly asking, if it wasn’t too much, for just a touch of rain to quench the parched and cracked earth—not even a downpour, just a few moments really of moisture would help. I knew, talking to so many people, that they joined me in this prayer. I told friends and strangers of this prayer I uttered each day, many times a day, some told me they too were praying fervently for rain and others rolled their eyes at me and told me how God had no part in this—it was the improper use of our resources, global warming, and too many damn lawns. It was time to plow them under and make rock yards and zero landscapes.
These two different conversations (and a hundred variants) played in my mind for weeks. I understood the prayers of my neighbors who continued to furiously water their lawns and yards and support the watering of parks, but also agreed with the sentiments of the realists who decried the improper use of watering and the waste of lawns—to a degree.
I walked the streets of enlightened neighborhoods in Salt Lake City who had “flipped the strip” and felt the heat radiating off the stones and charcoal lava rocks. Beside the black tar roads, I felt like I was walking through an oven. When I reached a park with majestic tall trees and soft grass, the coolness embraced me and I felt as if I wanted to stay outside, despite the heat of the day, and in the shade of the leaves overhead. I thought of the first settlers, over two hundred and fifty years before, who were greeted by bleak landscapes and no shade for miles. They harnessed the water to bring it down from the mountains so they could plant groves of trees and designate parks where you could escape from the heat. They sacrificed their water away from their essential crops, to foster and grow trees that they would never sit under. But I do today. I felt this wash of gratitude and awe that they would think of us, generations later and create beauty for the future. I wondered what we could do . . .to both honor them and not mock their sacrifice.
So my prayer changed, just a little, I prayed for wisdom for all of us to use these resources, this water, that we do have and make it last. And then I added a prayer for the tall trees and the young trees and the struggling bushes that they would be strong and fierce and figure out how to keep that water in their roots until more came. On my walks, I would reach out and touch the scrub oaks and knurled maples and tell them how strong and beautiful they were. I looked at the struggling bushes on the mountains and praised them. Each time we watered our lawns, for the short time we did, I told it soak it in and grow because even though zero landscape is best, the coolness of grass and tress in the desert is an oasis, a haven, that I had never appeared quite as much and wanted it to last. And most of all, my prayers turned into prayers of thanks for each cloud that grew in the sky and the days between the heat waves, when the temperature fell below 99. Our showers are shorter, much shorter, and we turn on the water only when we need a drink.
And the days were more and more often and each moment there was even a hint of rain, I told my children, it’s a promise . . . It’s an offering of hope from God. And I saw/see it as that.
My prayer of wants and pleading has turned to gratitude and thanks and amazement at how nature is surviving and in many ways thriving despite the years of the lack of water.
And today, as I walked with my friend, the clouds opened and rain poured down on us—only for a few minutes—but I was wet and damp and my heart was full. This week, we are having a monsoon season. It may not last, but I see it as a promise and I turned my head towards the sky and whispered “thank you.”
Comments
Post a Comment