The thing about the desert in the blazing afternoon sun is
the quiet. The only thing you can hear
is the wind, sometimes roaring up from the southern end of the Snake River
Plain. So quiet sometimes you can hear
your heart beating and the blood pumping in your ears. The wind so loud on other days you can barely
hear anything else.
The sun shines on these days in bright, white light. Heat rises on the horizon and pushes the
buttes into funky shapes and ripples the mountains to the west. I need the quiet. I’m terrified of snakes, and the quiet lets
my ears tell me what my eyes and the stick I use to poke the brush sometimes
don’t—a rattlesnake letting you know you’ve gotten a bit too close to his
grouchy ass.
I love the early summer, when the needle and thread grass
sways in waves. I sit in the lupine and
paintbrush to eat my lunch, and pull the seedy heads off the grasses, teasing
the large army ants. Usually staring off
at the mountains, thinking of good routes if I ever decided to climb again.
I’m late this year.
The flowers have gone to seed and the grasses have already senesced in
the dry heat. The cicadas have hatched,
and their loud scratching puts me on edge.
I can’t hear the quiet. Franklin’s
gulls circle everywhere. They only show
up here in these numbers when the cicadas are everywhere and fat and bleating—hiding
the sound of snakes. “They saved the Mormons,” I tell myself.
Maybe they’ll save me.
The weather man says we’re in for a severe drought if we don’t
get feet and feet of snow. I knew by
sitting in my grass and watching the snow on the Lost River Range we were in
for a dry spell. The grasses shrivel,
and with every sigh of the desert in the dry heat, I can feel a drought in my
heart swell.
We’re growing apart.
We fight and yell and drive each other crazy. We wonder aloud what we’re doing, and, as the
water table drops another foot, another giant chasm opens between us.
I sit in a manager’s office.
He calls me “kid” and “sweetie;” a condescending way of letting me know
he thinks I don’t know what I’m talking about.
“You’re going to have to supply supplemental water,” I tell him,
regarding the vegetation project he wasted his money on last year by not
listening to me. “Otherwise, you’re just
going to keep wasting your time and money.”
Supplemental water.
The grass is only greener on the other side of that fence ‘cause the
neighbors water. So we head into fall,
trying to water the dying shriveled mess we’ve made.
We make it to winter and the sky only sends enough snow to
make the roads unbearable and treacherous. Enough snow and bitter cold to
freeze us in a grip of cold and tragic death.
The reaper pulls at whim, leaving us surrounded by the screams of grief
that drown out all else like the cicadas have drowned out my quiet, peaceful
summer.
He takes at his leisure, and I wonder why, like Pilate, he
leaves us Barabbas and takes the good.
So we water our parched pieces of drought stricken hearts
with our tears and remember what really matters. In the middle of our loud and angry grief,
our gulls come in the form of “I’m sorry,” and “I love you,” and “the dishes
can wait.” They swoop down and gobble up
our sorrows and remind us we have time to heal.
Time. They give us time to focus
on what really matters. The cicada of
grief hatches and leaves behind an empty shell.
But like the butterfly, it morphs into something more beautiful. A hug.
A touch. Laughter. Love.
We realize we have time.
A gift denied many.
So, I’ll scoop up my glorious time, because when the drought
of time hits, no amount of watering will save it.
