What June Brings

We went 76 days in my little village without rain. My little herb garden struggled as I tried to care for them in the scorching southwest sun. In a day, my spearmint and lemon balm withered back to the root. I spent a few minutes pulling off dead and crisped leaves from the stalks. The trees around us dropped some of their weight, so now our yard is carpeted in a new layer of dried needles. The cicadas, in their cacophonous symphony, seemed to wake up earlier than last year, to the point where the crossover from the night's crickets to the morning's cicadas felt like a slap to the face.

Outside of my small, safe cut of land, all around me, wildfires burn. They've overrun two forests where I've spent a chunk of my free summers. Fire. It's a terror that, in the last few years, means planning how to fit your whole life into a suitcase to escape in a matter of minutes. It's a constant fear that comes with the freedom of mountain life.

I knew monsoon was supposed to come, and for the last week or two, massive thunderheads have rolled through, threatening rain. But it always evaporated before it hit the ground, and the clouds are gone by nightfall.

In the morning, I water my garden to the grating song of the cicadas, and in the night, I pray to whatever gods may be to keep fire far away.

The clouds opened up a few days ago, and it's been raining ever since. My garden boxes are sprouting new growth, and the cicadas have all but disappeared. It smells like petrichor and wet, loamy dirt. My dog slips on the deck stairs at night, but she's missing a leg, so we excuse much of her clumsiness. We take the stairs slowly, together, standing in the rain together for a few minutes.

That night, after the first thick curtains of rain drenched the ground, I got a text from my mom: wildfire in the canyon to the south. It had jumped the small highway and cut off all traffic in both directions to a major interstate freeway. It was eight minutes south by car.

In the night, I fill up my car at the gas station in case I need to evacuate, and in the morning, I refresh the news station every few minutes to see how contained the fire is.

0% contained, 12 acres. 30% contained, 20 acres. 60% contained, 24 acres, and two buildings. 100% contained, both freeway and highway opened to traffic.

It was a small fire in comparison to 340,000 acres burned to the north. Tiny, really. But the timing is what I wanted to talk to you about.

We waited 76 days for rain, and after it came, the fire started.

I was told once I was the kind of person who'd go out and stand in the rain. And I am, in the most literal sense. But, I've spent much of my life worrying about fires that haven't started while waiting for the rain to save me.

My carnations are blooming, small, soft, dainty flowers of the faintest blush pink, and my English lavender perfumes the air with a familiar smell. Even my lemon balm has new leaves unfurling close to the dirt. My home is safe, for now. Rain clouds are forming around me as I type, and I can smell the humidity in the air.

In the last days of June, may you feel safe and loved and calm.

All my love,

xx Bea