from the Archives, "Liquid Gold"

It’s like gold: providing livelihoods, causing wars and inspiring celebrations. It can be too plentiful and damaging, too slight and devastating. When it’s just right, it’s a beautiful thing.

Water in the west is king, and for months we’ve prayed for snow, rain, hail, anything with the chemical value of H2O. Nothing, but wind. Dry wind sucking the last remaining moisture from the earth, blowing top soil and making trees reach to the heavens, begging for the sky to quench their thirst.

Around the dinner table, we prayed for snow and rain each day and watched the skies. The new seeding was in the ground and we needed moisture before the wind blew it into the next county.

Then, the smell of rain, the clouds hanging low over the mountains. Could it be? I was carefully optimistic as I walked under the moon, watching the clouds push around it, then cover the sphere in a heavy veil. I could smell the sweetness of the spring rain on the mountains. It was close, but would it come on into the valley? I prayed out loud that it would.

My footsteps crunched in the stubble of the alfalfa field and I felt a drop, then another. It was a slow, light sprinkling of precious moisture. Perhaps it would blow over like so many times before. As I stepped inside from my evening walk, I heard the beat of the raindrops crescendo to a beautiful rhythm on the steel roof. It was raining! Finally!

That night I went to bed to the rhythm of the rain, and awoke to a stillness that can only be caused by a heavy covering of snow! White Gold! It’s a beautiful thing.


Originally published on the first contemporarywesterndesign.com site May 2007