A summer of rain

It is a summer of rain. Of lowering skies and pattering showers and clattering deluges on the roof.

Thunder rips apart the sky above our house, the windows shake in their frames and we feel the vibration through the floor. Bear would not like this, we say. And I imagine her trying to wedge herself between me and the cupboards at the counter where I stand chopping carrots.

It is a summer of clouds, of great anvil thunderheads above the city and towering columns climbing high over the fields, of silver ripples stretching across the sky like sand at the edge of a lapping lake and white shrouds draped over the mountains.

Light falls dully through the leafy canopy of the woods. Murdoch is a flat black shape whipping through the undergrowth, weaving around trees. He quickly becomes a shadow amongst shadows, lost in the dark corners of the forest. I call to him often, listen for the sound of his feet tearing up the earth.

It is a summer of green, and the stunted growth of ground cover beneath the trees where sunlight never seems to reach. It is a summer of frogs, and puddles that never dry up. Of overflowing beaver ponds and cool, fresh mornings that feel like fall.

If this were winter, Morgan says, we would have to tunnel out through all the snow that fell. Instead there are streams running where there shouldn’t be and slurping mud and water dripping from the trees.

It is a summer of foggy mornings and fascinating skies, layers upon layers of cloud. Of great gray sheets of water, like walls, moving across landscapes, obscuring distant fields and turning mountains into vague shadows.

It is a summer of wet dog and rubber boots and swarms of whining mosquitoes.

And when the sun does appear, peeking shyly at first through a tiny tear in the clouds, everything glows and the day is instantly warm and we run outside to see the blue sky and feel the heat on our skin and watch the light shine golden on Murdoch’s fur.

When the sun shines, water vapour hangs in the air and the day smells of wet earth and green things and warm rain. For a moment there is heat and the mosquitoes hide in the shade beneath leaves of wild flowers and weeds and it feels like summer at last. Sometimes if there is a break in the clouds at just the right time we see the most spectacular sunsets and the sky seems to go on forever. And some evenings, warm breezes come in at the windows carrying the promise of a golden sunrise in the morning.

But mostly, it is a summer of rain.