In these last days of meteorological summer, most of the rainy season seems lost to us now.
Most.
Like yesterday’s forecast, which fizzled spectacularly here: plenty of thunderheads, lots of gray skies, the occasional rumble of thunder and the rush of rising winds . . . and not so much as a single drop. But every now and again, we get a surprise.
Technically, it didn’t really count against yesterday, but today: I awakened inexplicably around 1:30 this morning, with no idea why . . . and then I noticed the streaks on the window. it was raining, and had clearly been doing so for some little while, and while by four o’clock the clouds had ceded space to the stars, the rain proved sufficient to soften the earth once more.
Dawn was a beautiful affair, still and silent, with only a few shirred clouds above the peaks, slate blue tipped with glowing coral, a little fire to go with the sunrise.
It was, in fact, if only momentarily, the same shade as the banding on the orange coneflowers that used to grow here in abundance at this time of year, the kind in the image above. It’s one that Wings shot on a midsummer’s day six years past, and you can see the lushness that surrounds their little stand — plenty of lush green leaves, purple and yellow phlox, wild honeysuckle — that have mostly abandoned us now.
Or, more accurately, been abandoned by us, if “us” is defined as humanity generally.
We still have a few of the purple phlox this year, even now; they seem to be remarkably hardy, or perhaps merely protected by their location. But these sunny blooms, shot here by Wings in digital format, a casual snap on his cell phone? This year, they were unable to withstand the drought. They’re one of several species of Rudbeckia, more commonly known to most people as black-eyed [or brown-eyed] Susans, and this downward slope of summer used to see the land dotted with them in shades of sunflower gold and the fiery banding above that evokes the earthy flames of prairie firewheels and Mexican sunflowers.
We have had none of those this year. Indeed, we have not even had any of the garden-variety Rudbeckia, the bright golden yellow coneflower petals that drape outward from purple-brown centers. Even more notably absent have been the wild sunflowers, a smaller-headed version of the classic domesticated shape that arises in large collective banks here in August and dances with the light typically through September’s end.
Of course, they are all born of the heart of the rainy season, when the monsoonal patterns have taken over the middle of every day, bestowing enough precipitation to keep the land alive even during the heat of the year, urging new growth on toward harvest and preparing the land for winter. Without an actual rainy season, and certainly not in its usual time, our weather patterns now have birthed signs of dormancy and death: Yesterday, the first red leaves appeared on the smaller fire maple, not just a few hints of red in the veins or limning the edges, but fully crimson and heading for brown.
It was a sobering moment.
Bu there was rain in the dark hours, and today, for the very first time this season, the first wild sunflowers appeared along the ditch that runs parallel to the drive up near the gate. I walked up this evening to look at them; it seemed important, somehow, to acknowledge in person what blooms at the rainy season’s end, against all odds and evidence. Of blossoms and buds combined, I counted exactly a dozen, no more. They rose, small and low and yet somehow defiant, amid a few small stands of mullein and cow parsley just in flower, against a backdrop of dry earth and chamisa already gold too soon. They are so small that they resemble plain Rudbeckia more than their own kind, but they are very clearly wild sunflowers — stunted by drought, but stubbornly alive.
The metaphor speaks for itself, but perhaps we should do a better job of heeding it, for we, too, are stubbornly alive in a world that would prefer the opposite. Yes, the leaves are the color of the fire two months too soon, but there is new sunlight emergent from the earth. What blooms at the rainy season’s end, even a season as small and wounded as the tiny shower that dusted the land with drops late this afternoon, reminds us that even with an earth that looks very different from what we so recently knew there is reason still to fight for it.
~ Aji
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