Some days, memory is all that’s left.
We thought we had seen the worst, to date, that the drought had to offer two years ago, when we went for nearly the entire year without a solitary raindrop or snowflake. That was more than bad enough.
What we couldn’t see was the damage below the surface, a thing alive and growing that even a year of moderately-decent precipitation could not forestall, much less mend.
It has made it to the surface this year.
But it’s not merely the cracked and broken earth, bones shattered and skin burned to ash now. It’s not merely the early yellowing of the leaves, small bits of dead fringe floating to carpet the earth at our feet. It’s not even the lack of rain, the oppressive heat and eternal haze, a deadly blanket that enfolds and suffocates this land now.
It’s the witnessing, in real time, of the dying of hope that kills the spirit.
And in this most awful of years, we cannot afford to let heart and soul give up the ghost.
The image above is from a couple of years ago: a lily that neither of us planted, yet it appeared in the depths of the drought, as though through some alchemical office of the spirits. It was the only bloom, petals the shade of sun and fire, and it felt like the gift it was.
This year, the lilies we did plant have not flowered. The larkspur, too, have not survived the heat and lack of water; the gladioli emerged, but only so far and no farther, nowhere near tall and strong enough to flower. The Mexican hat look tired now, beaten down by the effort of mere existence. Even the domestic sunflowers, seemingly impossible to suppress, have remained stubbornly unborn this year. And the wild sunflowers have only barely begun to bloom, their banks at their smallest level in years.
And yet, we remember what this land looked like only a short half-decade ago: lush and alive, sunflowers tall and wildly adance, the earth’s green shawl beaded with a rainbow of petals. And hope is a stubborn thing.
Memory and hope: two sides of the same coin, two ends of the spectrum we call reality, or perhaps existence. Memory is experience, held in our minds and hearts and spirits, a past and deeply personal reality that informs how we understand today’s. And no matter how grim it gets, hope is always there beneath it all, reminding us of what was and whispering in our ears that maybe, just maybe, it can be so again.
These twinned intangibles are themselves like flowers in the desert: a germinating seed, one that holds all the promise of a rainbow of petals opened wide to the world.
This was supposed to be a week of rain, next week, too — but I’ve noticed that they’ve altered the long-range forecast only this morning, now no more than a thirty-percent chance of rain on any day for the rest of the month. Typically, that means they’re simply hedging their predictive bets, and as a practical matter, we’ll get no rain at all out of it.
And yet, there was rain yesterday: a short, sharp shower in a classic monsoonal pattern, not long-lived, but heavy enough to soak the ground. The wind arrived late last night, and it appears that it delivered a bit more precipitation, too.
Memory tells us what was and what should be, so that we may recognize and navigate our new reality. Hope tells us that that reality need not be permanent, provided that we put in the work (and are granted a little luck).
We were looking forward to a week of rain, but the forecast has turned suddenly grim again. We are unlikely to have more than the wild sunflowers for the remainder of the season; it will be more than work enough trying to bring the corn and squash to fruition. But we remember what our world looked like not so long ago.
And for next year, we’ll work to bring it into full flower again.
~ Aji
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