In the morning I checked the weather report but felt some distance from it, like it was talking about a place I was supposed to be but wasn’t. The rain made the snow melt, a mixture of solemnness and hope, the last patches revealing a new, green lawn beneath. Brown from the drought before, green from the snow. It sparked a feeling of spring but we hadn’t even started winter yet, we were so far from that. And still we had this snow melt, the persistent slapping, clapping, dripping sounds on the pavement. In the kitchen the cat sneezed and the coffee pot spat, and the voice on the radio made me feel warm again, connected. The gentle ticks from the grandfather clock familiar, the wind on the window panes. The way sound can curl around you like the tide coming in, then bend in a soothing way as it goes back out. All the tiny pebbles along the shoreside and the little pockets of air released, the mist and damp coming down from the fog. Waking in my tent with everything wet but the sounds are so alive, the birds and raptors make song of it too. I don’t care about the weather report for I am here now with it, gone to a place free of human commentary, nature’s only narrative.

[for Bruce]

Categories: prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, pacific northwest, prose, stream-of-consciousness