Monsoon Adventure

The edge of the storm

Genuine AZ storm - see the Saguaros? (Suh-war-ohs)

Today I learned what a haboob is. It is not something you smoke tobacco from in the Middle Eastern restaurants – that is a hooka. A haboob is the big dust storm that comes just before the big thunderstorm. We’ve had a lot of both lately. As I said a while back, I LOVE a good thunderstorm. So much that I moved here from the coast of California just so I could be in them more often. Wait, that sounds a bit flakey... it wasn't the final decisive factor, it was the original driving force (That's better). Anyway, this monsoon season I am not disappointed! It has stormed almost every day, usually in the evening after the heat builds and the towering puffy clouds form. But the last few days they have even come in the morning. The air gets heavy and begins to smell like the wet greasewood plants in the desert that are already getting rained on (creosote bushes – same things - I think they have a third name too).

Rio was reading “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” and I was working at the same table. The rain started, then it got heavier, so we opened the door to the patio to be able to see it. Rio was born on August 3^rd and came home around the 10^th of August. August is monsoon season in Arizona. So one of Rio’s first excursions outside as a week-old infant was to watch the lightening, feel the rain, and listen to the thunder roll across the Sonoran desert sky. Fortunately it didn’t scar him for life, he only has that slight fear we probably all feel with a huge nearby bolt of lightening followed by a roaring roll of thunder - Fear I like to think of as “healthy respect” for nature. He too loves storms.

Usually summer storms are very short-lived – it may pour for less than 10 minutes typically, then quickly rebounds to hot, now with added humidity. But this one POURED, and for a long time. The temperature went from 84 when it started raining (still cool by summer standards) to 74 degrees within 15 minutes. Eventually Rio moved a chair outside on his own accord, safely under the dry awning, and sat there continuing to read. When the storm let up some an hour later, we took off our socks and shoes, put on shorts, and went out to see the impact. The street was flooded side to side, the huge grassy retention basin down the street was at least 4 feet deep! We sloshed around the streets with the water above our ankles, got as far into the basin as apprehension would allow (dark, muddy water, eek), and took pictures from under a big umbrella.

When we returned to the house delighted and somewhat muddy, we discussed that our sharing that wonderful storm would not have been possible with my “old life” even two months ago. I would have been at work giving my best energy to other kids; he would have been at his aunt’s or elsewhere.

As a result of making the leap recently to change my life from always having had a “job”, to for the first time ever having work and an income, yet freedom from a “job”, I was HOME for the storm at mid-day, home for Rio. I committed to myself and to him a few months ago that I was going to create for us an “adventurous life” (facilitated by freeing and fun sources of income), knowing that “adventures” can occur anywhere, anytime, even in Target or while doing homework, but certainly including travel to the African savannah (his request for our next big trip in a few years)… and playing in thunderstorms.
And once again I am reminded of that quote, “We don’t remember days, we remember moments.”