Wet World
I woke to a different world this morning. A drizzle and bit of rain settled over northern New Mexico last night and in the morning a chill wet hung over everything.
There was nothing much in the rain gauge -- just under a quarter inch of accumulated precipitation overnight and not enough to even wet the stones beneath the patio table -- but there was a heavy dampness in the air.
My normal routine of waking to brilliant sunshine was disrupted. I had to turn on lights in the house just to make coffee. There was no pool of dappled sunshine to warm my back as I sat at the dining room table to read the paper.
The paper, which is always tossed on our front sidewalk wrapped in a yellow plastic sleeve, was sleeveless this morning. It lay on the walk, unwrapped and all soggy and soaked through. How perverse is that?
People back east don't want to read about rain, and certainly anyone in the flooded Carolinas doesn't. But it is so unusual here that I am compelled to tell you about it. It was just drizzle with solid gray skies, that's all.
It didn't pour buckets like monsoon rain and the windows and doors didn't leak like they do when we get a hard thunderstorm, and the rain didn't pass by in a flash of a few minutes like it usually does.
Instead, the skies just sat all leaden and dark. The aspen leaves made a different sound in the slight breeze, not all dry and rattly but a softer sound. A cottonwood leaf got plastered to the wet glass of the window.
The fine film of dust that covers everything in this climate has been wetted and now coats the windows and patio furniture. There will be window washing and furniture cleaning to do.
But for now I'm just enjoying a cup of coffee in the cold damp, reading a soggy paper and looking out every few minutes to marvel at how wet everything is.
There was nothing much in the rain gauge -- just under a quarter inch of accumulated precipitation overnight and not enough to even wet the stones beneath the patio table -- but there was a heavy dampness in the air.
My normal routine of waking to brilliant sunshine was disrupted. I had to turn on lights in the house just to make coffee. There was no pool of dappled sunshine to warm my back as I sat at the dining room table to read the paper.
The paper, which is always tossed on our front sidewalk wrapped in a yellow plastic sleeve, was sleeveless this morning. It lay on the walk, unwrapped and all soggy and soaked through. How perverse is that?
People back east don't want to read about rain, and certainly anyone in the flooded Carolinas doesn't. But it is so unusual here that I am compelled to tell you about it. It was just drizzle with solid gray skies, that's all.
It didn't pour buckets like monsoon rain and the windows and doors didn't leak like they do when we get a hard thunderstorm, and the rain didn't pass by in a flash of a few minutes like it usually does.
Instead, the skies just sat all leaden and dark. The aspen leaves made a different sound in the slight breeze, not all dry and rattly but a softer sound. A cottonwood leaf got plastered to the wet glass of the window.
The fine film of dust that covers everything in this climate has been wetted and now coats the windows and patio furniture. There will be window washing and furniture cleaning to do.
But for now I'm just enjoying a cup of coffee in the cold damp, reading a soggy paper and looking out every few minutes to marvel at how wet everything is.
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