Made Fresh Today - July 9th, 2007

Lightning God in My Garden

This morning we had a fantastic thunder storm complete with several flashes of lightning that lit up the sky. We haven't had any significant rain in a few weeks, so much so that just digging around my plants in the backyard here the soil is sandy-dry for several inches. It's just not good. And if it's not good for my little plant charges, it's even worse for the fields of corn and for all growing things. Now's the season. July. Summer. Everything's got to grow grow grow.

I look forward to great thunderstorms with lightning. The most memorable for me was walking down a snow-filled street in January when the sky above started to rumble and we had several lightning flashes. I didn't think that you could have a thunderstorm in the dead of winter. It stopped me in my tracks and just goes to show me that just when I thought things were the way they are, they aren't. Follow? Yeah.

This is the Lightning God found in petroglyphs from the Anasazi culture in the Southwest U.S. I have a particular fondness for the US Southwest. I had a dream once that I was on a senior's bus tour out of Las Vegas. I had boarded the bus and as I sat down realized I had no idea where we were going. Someone told me "you're going to the desert". We travelled a few hours and stopped at a red cliff. Everyone got off the bus in the middle of nowhere which really concerned me. It was really dark and I looked around and saw an orange glow up in the cliffs. I headed towards it and there was a campfire in the center of a cave. There were pillows set up around it to sit down on and I wondered as I sat whether we'd be there for the night. I was very worried and I looked around fearfully until I dimly made out some lines on the walls of the rocks behind me. I walked up to it and saw it was a petroglyph, a hand print, and as I reached to touch it my hand fit perfectly into the hand on the wall of rock. It was instant comfort.

I woke up from this dream many years ago feeling that indeed I was an artist, no doubt going very very far back with me. I had this dream before I took my first plane ride, to Phoenix and the Sonoran desert, and later to Sedona and my beloved red rocks. I am very very comfortable in that desert land, even though these days you just know that the desert was not made to accommodate so many thirsty folk.