Wetting my pants...in the rain

The rain is coming down in one constant sheet right now. It sounds solid on the aluminum roofs of our trailers. I can vaguely make out the girls chatter in the next room, the kitchen, but everything else is smothered by the gray buzz of rain. It hasn’t rained in over 30 days and I think, gauging by this huge wash of water, it might be no less than a miracle for the plants and the animals of central Western Australia.

I am not a farmer; I have never been hugely dependent on the rain. It’s nice in the midst of a hot day to cool the skin and the air, but I don’t know what it’s like to have your land and your animals—your future—riding on the next storm. After planting native Aussie trees the last week, and talking with farmers and land owners, I unknowingly received a dose of worry, real worry, about the nature of water. And so, when the rain finally did come, first as a teasing sprinkle and then, suddenly, as a white flood from the skies, this time it all came to me different.

The afternoon picked up in wind as the air temperature dropped swiftly. The strikingly intense southern sun disappeared behind a wall of ominous clouds. That first drop hit like an ice cold pin prick. And then I noticed the smell. The smell of something so wonderful, after you have prayed, and waited, and prayed some more for its arrival. Waiting minutes, hours, days for it. Waiting while you calculate losses and lives for it. The rain smelled like upturned, healthy soil and mud and green and all of that, but it also smelled like something rich, and rare; something that comes to you a few times in your life and smacks you with nostalgia and beauty, like a favored childhood memory; something vivid and tangible and necessary; something that cannot be described adequately, ever.

The rain made today even more brilliant. Earlier, we had witnessed the birth of a baby goat. When we arrived 5 days ago, two little ones had just been born and we have been waiting for this other mom to give birth. We named the new baby Charlie Gumnuts and now run and check on him every chance we can. We also visited an out of the way farmhouse on the way back to our accommodation. As we walked up and patted the requisite dog we were surprised to see a horse standing on the front porch of the house, staring in the windows. When he saw us he came down off the porch, as if to greet us. Never seen that before! Only in Oz. Out back they had 5 or 6 black-tailed wallabies in a pen. They were babies whose mums had been hit by cars and the owner of the house was caring for them until they were old enough to go free. (We didn’t tell the girls the wallabies weren’t kangaroos and none of them much cared as they got down on all fours and socialized with these amazing marsupials).

Tomorrow is the last work day of the week (unless we get rained out).

I have no internet or phone at the farm and am missing many of you (but not all! Hahah just kidding) terribly and sometimes really have to ask myself what the hell I am doing so far away. But these days are all like small gifts and they pass so quickly and in the end I try, and often fail, to fully articulate all that I have experienced in the breadth of 24 hours. The words never come quite how I would like them to and never do the experience justice anyhow, but I feel different—I feel myself growing, and gaining, and changing, for the better. After this last spell down under I’m thinking I might actually be ready to start looking at a final round of graduate school. Scary, but how fun to have everyone call me Dr. Katers, or “the Doctor”…haha. Anyway you look at it, each moment adds up to one big lesson. Do we find all of the answers in those few and final minutes? Are we enlightened then with how simple life really can be? Will we be able to predict the rain any better then? Will the earth be bone dry?

Back to the wondrous hum of rain falling all around, drowning out even the voices now, and the animals (they tell us goannas may be the ones sliding their bodies along above us), and the obnoxious call of the black crow. Besides, the girls are making ‘breakfast for dinner’ tonight and I hear my pancakes calling from the kitchen!

Peace to all,

laura