Monsoon Risk By Ron Bartlow

The pines outside my window quiver in the same wind that quakes the kale leaves and peals the wind chimes. Under a canopy of gray clouds obscuring the summer sun the wind moves on, a constant oscillating rumble in the trees and against the roof. Meteorologists, climatologists, astrologists, and other prognosticators can make their predictions, but no one can say for certain if or when the monsoon storms will come. The pithy comments of locals point out the uncertainty: "Don't like the weather? Just wait a minute!" "If it's not raining where you are, it probably is on the other side of town!"

 

But this is not a typical summer. In some ways, "summer" began in mid-March, when the schools did not re-open. Sure, it is providential that I was also at home to help the children transition to remote "learning" (if their self-attenuated studiousness can be called that), but like summers past both they and I became less productive almost immediately. Days blurred like the gray skies now overhead.

 

Summer storms broke out early, too. Not the deluge of rain pounding against the ground and filling culverts, but a torrent of protest and pain sounding against overt and covert racism. Thunder sounded in our communities as ideologies clashed; lightning strikes of change flashed in the news. The storm was always brewing, and one hopes the sound and fury of the current season truly leads to life; a landscape renewed by a summer downpour, a cascade of justice and mercy for all.

 

Whether it be the flare-ups of the oppressed calling for justice or the sparks of the empathic calling for masks, our cultural storm is igniting change. Perhaps the obstacles to our national ideal of all being equal will be burned away, the mountains laid flat and valleys raised up so that all may stand together. But the raging fire necessary for such refining gives me pause.

 

Still, outside my window the wind moves, the clouds build, and eventually, the rain will come. While I will weather the storm as a necessity for our desert, I maintain hope that rain will fall on both the just and unjust to renew our land.