Yesterday’s storm brought us an extraordinary amount of rain. The earth is still rich with damp.
So was the rug in an upstairs room where the roof sprang not one but two leaks during the storm. I had long since mopped up the leaks; this morning, I hauled the rug outside to dry. We’re awaiting the arrival of the roofers now to give us an estimate on fixing it.
And we’re awaiting the next line of storms.
That is, in fact, the ordinary way of things here at the heart of summer: hot sunny mornings followed by line after line of weather systems, often severe, throughout the afternoon. But the past six years have brought precious little precipitation of any sort, and we had become accustomed to a new “normal” that was in fact anything but. Now, with the return of more seasonally appropriate weather, we’re finding ourselves having to adjust once more.
Of course, “seasonally appropriate” is not the same as “normal patterns.” Much of our rain is now occurring under cover of the dark. That’s actually a good development; the intensifying heating trends of earth and air and the deepening of our already-record drought mean that precipitation in the cooler hours, when it’s more likely to soak into the earth rather than evaporate, is necessarily a gift. But it doesn’t make up for the harm done by the warming, or the drying, or the aridifying, or habitat and species loss that is ensuing from them all in real time. It also means that we more often miss out on the gifts of the post-storm light that used to be a regular feature of summer twilight here.
The image above is one such example, one of a series of shots that Wings captured in digital format, if memory serves, at the end of a summer’s rainy afternoon some sixteen to eighteen years ago. Others in the series will appear in this space in tomorrow’s post, and as a group, they show not only the aftermath of the rain, but that phenomenon we here call “dust light,” a result of dust and smoke and particulate matter casting a veil over the sun’s glow. This particular shot, though, out of the entire series, is perhaps my personal favorite, a mix of violet and gold that so clearly illustrates the day’s last dance of storm and sun.
All of these images are unretouched: no editing, either digitally or otherwise, and they were shot in the days before filters were included in phone cameras . . . or, indeed, before the existence of phone cameras, period. This one would’ve been taken with Wings’s very first digital camera, a very small early-generation Nikon, but the camera quality was good.
More importantly, the subject matter was so brilliant, so intense and colorful, that filters or editing would never have entered his mind in the first place. The raw material this bit of earth and sky provides needs no human “improvement.”
This image is a case in point. In thumbnail form, it appears to be a mix of gray and yellow: classic storm colors, yes, but not necessarily particularly beautiful ones; eerie and haunting, perhaps, but not what comes to mind as aesthetically pleasing. Until, of course, you see the photo itself, full size and up close. Then the blues of the storm show through clearly, a whirling blend of periwinkle and violet blue and slate, the lower surfaces gilded by the gradient beneath — silver, gold, amber, smoke. The shape is relevant, too, as an example of the rotational force and power of our summer storms.
That last quality has only increased as the threats to land and climate have deepened.
As I write, the sun still shines brilliantly, but the thunderheads are gathering around the horizon. The turquoise skies of morning are ceding space now to the deeper blues of impending rain. It’s unlikely that we will see much in the weather before late in the day, possibly not even until tonight, but I suspect there will be at least some.
And perhaps we will be granted one last bit of medicine, too: the day’s last dance of storm and sun, one of hauntingly beautiful clouds and otherworldly light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
