The arrival of the Wet

I think I may have witnessed the beginning of the rainy season last weekend. I’d been back in Belize just four days, the first three of which were bone dry. Dust had settled thick over the whole country, coating every conceivable surface in my house (neglected as it had been). My plants were looking decidedly close to death. The dust from the dirt roads, kicked up by stiff daily afternoon winds, coated not only the grass and shrubs by the roadside (as had been the case for much of the past few months), but reached up into the leaves of the trees surrounding the education center where I work, lending them a silvery-grey hue. The color of the trees, accentuated by the strangely crisp and rosy light of a sky just waiting for the right moment to unleash the deluge that had been accumulating for months, gave my daily walk home from work an otherworldly feel. The entire atmosphere was charged with a feeling of change on the horizon. And then last Saturday it came. Great torrents of wind and rain dampening down the incessant dust. For hours the lightning flashed in great white-hot charges and thunder boomed from every direction. Now I’m a sucker for a good spell of dramatic weather, so I sat it out on the patio in my hammock, outside the confines of my cement walls. And what blessed relief! From the oppressive heat I’d been suffering (with great complaint) since my return from a decidedly cooler early (read indecisive) spring in the northeastern US. Thank God! My only complaint – and of course there had to be one – is that the rain came just in time to make drying my laundry out on the line a little less than convenient. I can see I’m going to have to rig up a better rainy season clothesline system than the one I’ve got. Pain in the ass weather!


a sight from the dusty past (as of a week ago)