Another Drenching

Guess yesterday's innocuous weather, giving us mostly heavily overcast skies but yet occasional sunny periods was enough to pull us out of the mental state we've been labouring under of late, anticipating nothing but rain and more rain.

Granted, in the morning there was one cloudburst, and it resulted in a good rainfall, but so what? It was the stupendous thunder that followed a mere half-hour later, announcing its imminence from the distance, a thunder that asserted a menacing (thrilling, actually) reality that crept forward becoming louder and ever more threatening.

All right, guess that's enough of purple prose. Suffice it to say that when those thunder claps hit right overhead and unleashed truly impressive volumes of rainwater, we were, as incredible as it seems even to us, given our recent experiences of day after day downpours, entirely taken by surprise.

A thunderstorm, we thought, soon over and done with. But it wasn't to be. It came down unrelentingly, one wave of thunder and its attendant lavish downpour after the other. I took photographs of the front garden, standing on the porch, with rain pelting down around me. I feel, actually, inspired as a result of these seemingly freak weather phenomena. Freak only in the context of frequency and ferocity. This month, in this city, will go down in the annals of Environment Canada's records as the coldest, rainiest in history.

Upstairs later, there was one tremendous clap and out went the lights. And I heard a loud "ping!", then remembered I'd left the computer on. Thank heavens for those expensive but reliable circuit breakers (surge protectors). We could even hear, as the rain lashed the windows, that rain was coming straight down the chimney, and plopping inside the fireplace with a regular, dream-beat precision.

Good thing we have a commodious garage, for even though there is a car in one half and the construction materials for our new garden shed in the other half, there is ample room left still for the electric saw set-up to cut the lumber to length. Which is exactly what my husband busied himself doing, throughout the morning and the early afternoon, storm be damned - or rather admired and respected.

The thunder and the rain eventually relented. Just wore itself out, got tired of teasing us and after rallying for one last thunderous swoop through the area finally decamped to plague others, elsewhere on its trajectory. We swiftly accoutered ourselves, with raincoats and waterproof hiking boots, and ventured into the ravine.

We could hear the creek roaring from up the hill, and as we descended, it grew in sound volume most impressively. Mosquitoes were having a most enjoyable time of it; they've hatched in great numbers, given the perfect conditions prevailing with accumulated rainwater ponds everywhere. With them we were not impressed.

The creek has become a ravening river of mud rushing madly along carrying with it tree limbs and all manner of washed-out detritus, and in the process smelling deeply of swamp gas. We were truly impressed. All the more so when, although we had to trudge deep in muck up and down the trails with our little dogs faithfully following, the sun began to filter through the foliage.

And we saw mist beginning to rise. And had our heads combed by pine branches brought low with the weight of accumulated soakings. The sight of goldfinches, chickadees and robins flighting about the trees - behaving as though nothing had ever been amiss, as though this is but another summer day - seeking out advantages; a worm here, an insect there, reminded us of the resilience of all things dependent on nature.