When it rains in the desert the usual small talk is to say that 'it's good for the desert.' It is, of course, but it's a little hard for a full time RVer to completely mean it. Especially if he has dogs. No RV is large during a rain.

Trying to keep busy inside, I watched a couple DVDs from the Ajo, AZ library. One was “Babette's Feast,” the Danish production of Isak Dinesen's (Karen Blixen) tale. What a marvelous movie! It certainly belies the cliche that 'the movie isn't nearly as good as the book.' The movie was a feast for the senses in a way that dry letters on a page could never be. What fun it was to watch the austere Protestants, on a gloomy and desolate northern seacoast, enjoying—but feigning indifference to—a spectacular meal cooked by a French chef.

But the poor dogs were getting cabin fever. What did they care about a little rain? I had no choice but to indulge them on a short walk. They loved the softness of the ground—rain has quite an effect on “soil” even when it is mostly decomposed granite. The mottled flecking in granite is much more noticeable when the rock is wet.

The desert smells different when it is wet—suggesting verdancy and fecundity. I have gotten used to the ocotillos' spines being hidden by their leaves. But when grass pops up all over the desert, you know something special is happening.

How marvelous it is to walk in warm rain. It is supposed to be cold. For that matter the desert is supposed to be dry. There is a special experience that warm rain brings on. I've seen it before while riding a bicycle in the rain. You  lose all fear and relax so completely that your ego essentially dissolves into the surroundings. Essentially this is what William James wrote about in his "Varieties of Religious Experience."

That happened again here. "I" didn't really exist--all that existed were startled desert plants taking a holiday from their usual existence as the prickly, dessicated Puritans of the Sonoran desert. Today they were epicures at an all-day feast falling out of the desert sky.

Dedicated to Suzi H, Spokane, WA.