Rain

The rains finally came. We had a real monsoon storm up at DMU and down in Bowie a few days ago. It's not much but enough for the ocotillo to put on green leaves. They look fuzzy now. For those that don't know, ocotillo are like 8 to 10 foot whips with inch long spikes that grow in clusters out here. But the leaves give them a come hither look.

We got the new black out shades up in the commissary. It's much cooler in there now. The AC shouldn't have to work so hard. AC is a new thing to most of us up here. We do swamp coolers and fans. But the food was going bad due to the heat in that room. Ye lords of the environment, forgive us our trespasses. Over the last three years out here I have let go my strangle hold on most things I deemed 'environmentally friendly'. I had to do it in order to survive. I cannot drive two hours to Tucson for organic food. Yes, I will work with industrial chemicals if only you will give me a job. I even played with the idea of working for the copper mine in Safford. Would I do it? In the end I decided, no. But if I lived in Safford and was unemployed long enough, hell yes I would. I would say that if one is isolated and out of work long enough, there are many things one would do that, until that point, would never do in the past. This is one of the lessons for me serving the great retreat. Soon, I will start going to church, happily, because that's where you meet single ladies out here. I see them (no longer single) with their children during the day at Safeway in Willcox. I am there on the Internet looking for jobs. I hear them when they talk to their other lady friends. They are talking about church. Perhaps I will become the first Mormon buddhist. If there were a synagogue around here I would go there. I'm totally down with many aspects of reform Judaism. Then I'd be a MorJuBu. I digress. The retreaters are all tucked in and staring another month long deep retreat period. All is quiet. No fires. No ice. Wind is calm. No major floods yet. Most of their solar panels are working. The campground is very empty. Just three people living there now. We got the last of the broken straw bales out of the campground. Filled up one more dumpster with garbage from the teachings and even from the building of the cabins.

Last evening I walked out my front door in Bowie, looked at the sunset, and cried out is amazement. A shot of prana went up my spine. This rarely happens in the context of sunsets for me. But this one was a doozy. There was a vast highway of puffy cloud horizontal strips stretching away from me. They were colored a reddish gold that was shocking. Very concentrated. Since the rains came, the clouds have returned in a big way. Arizona has the market on clouds.