Big Thought
The wind is still howling this morning. Knocking the trees around and just generally being a nuisance. There’s a good chance it will rain today. But I’ve been there before. And when you’re in a time of drought, it can be a cruel hoax. The gray clouds gather, deliver a smattering of moisture then move on. The ground stays dry, and everyone wonders what happened.
It makes me think about the Anasazi who lived in the southwest and built all those pueblo ruins. I visited one on a recent trip to Colorado. We went to Chimney Rock National Monument. The Anasazi had a good run of 1000 years. Then the rains stopped. Nothing grew. Bad times came. They moved on. And if you’d like to know more about that read House of Rain by Craig Childs. Not real sure we’re totally immune to that sort of catastrophe. I mean how many straws can you stick in an aquifer and expect it to last?
But at this point I’m only one of eight billion people on the planet and I feel sort of tiny even though I have a decent sized piece of real estate to call my home. And this feels as though I’m straying into big question territory when I wanted to stay small and simply talk about local stuff like the wind blowing and the rain that might come and the music I hear and the people I love. So, that’s where I’ll leave it, because it feels as though that will do me the most good. And I still wish it would rain.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale