Rain in the Desert

5 p.m. Saturday

It “showered” in the desert today and I was here to see, hear, feel, touch and taste it! If you've never been to the High Desert region of West Texas, I'm not sure if you can fully appreciate what a blessing a any sort of rain is out here. They'd gotten a few showers yesterday and, from the looks of things, earlier in the week, too. The landscape is greener than normal, but the cacti aren't bloomin', yet.

We went up to Alpine, about 80 miles north of Terlingua, this morning to pick up some things we'd forgotten. On the way “home” I had the delight of seeing Del Norte and Santiago mountains shrouded in not only clouds [I've seen that before], but those sheets of rain you can see off in the distance. It was magnificent!

Seein' the rain in the Mountains made me hope it would be rainin' in Terlingua by the time we got back. My wish came true. There had been a Wear Your Pajamas to the Garage Sale event at Kathy's Kosmic Kowgirl Kafe this morning and they were just wrappin' up when we pulled in at 3:30 p.m. There were some sprinkles starting and I didn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain. I went over to the one vendor still there and got 2 succulents and a cactus for $1. She was just gonna charge me 75 cents [why don't keyboards have a “cents” sign anymore?], but I made her take a dollar so I wouldn't feel too guilty. It was sprinklin' water down on me and I LURVED it.

As I sit here in our cabin, the wind is pickin' up and there are gray skies almost all around so we may get some more of those wonderful drops of water from the sky. I don't have time to write more, I'm goin' outside to watch the sky.

9:30 p.m.

Except for a few spits and spats, it didn't rain this afternoon like I'd hoped.

When we got back from dinner, the sun was goin' down. We sat out at the picnic table outside our cabin door, watching the sky and mountains get darker. Terlingua sits on the NNW edge of the Castalon Basin, so there are mountains all around us.

A couple of cotton-tails bounced around in front of us about 40-50 yards away. One of them came a little closer, but then they had to go home. How do I know they went home? Because about 20-30 minutes after the bunnies left...the coyotes started warming up. They serenaded us 'til we came inside. Yips, full-throated barks and long, hopeful howls, we listened to it all for free.

Once the sky was fully dark, we looked up to the diamonds in the sky. Until I came out here, I thought I had stars in my night sky just like you think I'll bet. We were both wrong. Out here there's no light pollution. I see two -three times as many stars here as I do at home. And I don't live in a big city, like some of y'all. I miss seeing all the stars when I'm home. I know they're there, I just can't see them.

Big day tomorrow, if it works out well, I'll tell you about it. Today may prove to be an aberration in my writing dry spell. But there's just something about rain in the desert that soothes my soul and puts a silly grin on my face.