It's the Rainy Season

I love the clouds here in the summer. Sometimes they peek over the mountaintops, then continue to grow higher and higher into tall cumulus peaks, snow white, resembling mountains of whipped cream. I think if I had a giant spoon I could take a bite. At other times they look muscular and strong, their bulges and humps look like a boxer flexing his muscles, as if to say, "Watch out, I'm going to drop a giant thunderstorm on your head." It's only bluff. When you look later, that big cloud has dissipated into a shimmering cirrus shelf, gradually fizzling out.

The clouds seem to come from the northwest, veer west and turn toward the southside of the lake. Sometimes the thunder rolls and lightning zig-zags the length of the lake. A big fireworks show. Maybe that's why the original inhabitants were afraid of the thunder and lightning gods, and that they used a lightning bolt in their paintings and pottery.

There are some mornings when we wake and see the mountains totally covered in soft gray clouds and mist which sinks lower and lower so that you feel they are going to cover you with their moisture. Then maybe it does rain in the village, or maybe it rains up in the mountains and we never know it until the water runs down the arroyos and into the streets.

I never tire of looking up, up, up to see where the clouds are and what kind they are, trying to predict, "Is it going to rain today or tonight?" But the clouds are clever, they never disclose their intent until there is a sudden downpour--or a silent drifting away. The natives go along with their daily business. If it rains, the women grab an umbrella, the macho men let the rain soak their shirts. They know the sun will return and the clouds will form again.