I'm not greedy. I won't ask this conjurer for much rain. I just want the clouds, actually. You should just try to drive out on a wet dirt road sometime.
The monsoonal clouds and the weathered sandstone hoodoos near camp seem related in a topsy-turvy way. I like seeing rain that doesn't really reach the ground. It looks better in photographic negative. It falls downward from the cloud for a certain distance, and then returns. It is a geyser or fountain in reverse.
On BLM land that is over 8000 feet I am experiencing a distant echo of Arizona's spring. Indian paintbrush is putting on its show. On rides or hikes it becomes a sport to find the clump with the most vivid colors.
I have become such an idolater of monsoonal clouds that I've even taken to anthropomorphizing them as deities. I don't want to describe them in a nebulous manner so I give them names, Spanish names actually.
Do you think it's silly to anthropomorphize like this? What should I notice about nature: how "breathtakingly beautiful" it is? But it isn't, at least not very often. It's just as likely to be monotonous and uncomfortable. Nature is visually beautiful about as long as a new odor is pleasant...or unpleasant for that matter. And for the same reason.
To spend any length of time outdoors, and to keep it interesting, we must try to live with nature--not just look at it. And in doing so we will inevitably anthropomorphize it.
I mentioned the Argentinian Thoreau before, named W. H. Hudson. Quoting from chapter 8 of his "Idle Days in Patagonia":
"the mind's
projection of itself into nature, its attribution of its own sentient
life and intelligence to all things--that primitive universal faculty
on which the animistic philosophy of the savage is founded. When our
philosophers tell us that this faculty is obsolete in us, that it is
effectually killed by ratiocination, or that it only survives for a
period in our children, I believe they are wrong, a fact which they
could find out for themselves if, leaving their books and theories,
they would take a solitary walk on a moonlit night..."
This stubborn tendency to anthropomorphize is most noticeable in our relationship to our pets. But something else happens when we take our dogs outdoors with us. They serve as an intermediary between ourselves and the rest of nature. They help us melt into it.
Coming home from a ride I went to the kitchen sink for water. The spray bounced off a dish and danced in a shaft of sunlight coming down from the opened RV roof vent. Have you ever had a rainbow in your RV before? The goddesses of cloud and shade, Nube and Sombra, did this to show their pleasure.
