What The Rain Reveals

How many, if not all, memories are there waiting for the proper stimulus to bring them forth in a virtual step back in time?  The same mind and person lives within this ancient body.  Only the constraints of physical deterioration can claim the joy of being a child again, and my steps seek out puddles and broad yellow leaves in my path.

As rain storms slam into the California coast in a much needed deluge, I choose a break in the downpour to get in a walk.  This is winter in San Diego.  The temperatures are in the fifties and I enjoy being bundled up in a heavier coat.  Strolling along wet streets near a flooding creek racing through the canyon where our RV park is situated, I catch a scent of mud and water that brings me back in time to a creek running behind my childhood home.  Memories of exploring that watery channel flood my mind, and I smile.  Childhood is but a mere whiff away in my mind. 

Tree trunks with a texture like grey velvet or mottled marble intrigue me as I walk past.  Reaching out, I touch the grey strength of a towering monolith of a tree with branches beginning twenty feet above my head.  I marvel at the soft smoothness of its bark.  Wrinkles in its bark make my mind contemplate its likeness to shark skin.  These sentries seem comforting, as I walk by a row of these trees skirting the boundary of our RV Park.

In the middle of an urban world, the RV Park is sandwiched between an Interstate Highway and a railroad track.  The noise from both is endless.  Yet here, hummingbirds treat themselves to the nectar they find in the flowers of a bottle brush tree.  I walk picking out components of nature to nourish my soul, yearning to be surrounded by the quiet of a remote forest.  However there is a lesson nature imparts, if one will listen to its whispers.  Nature will find you anywhere in your world.  But only if you are willing to open your heart, your eyes and your senses.

Blackberries

Blackberries are getting ripe in Washington.  Creeping along fences and onto pathways, they seem to grow wherever there is not an ongoing effort to contain them.  Interestingly all of the berries do not ripen simultaneously, granting anyone willing enough to brave the thorns that protect this succulent fruit multiple opportunities to gather the black, juicy tidbits the vines offer.  The sunny summer weather has produced a bounty to harvest.  How sad that so many will pass by and fail to gather this gift of nature until the overripe fruit falls to the ground below to tempt smaller gatherers or to perpetuate the vines themselves with their fallen seeds.

There is an unused building near the entrance to the RV Park where we currently reside.  From the street the structure looks almost abandoned with windows boarded up and the growth of blackberry canes surrounding it on all sides in the mounded shapes of greenery their growth favors.  I cannot help but imagine bears in their mountain habitats surrounding Seattle must also be finding the potential blackberry harvest a treasure trove of sweetness.

The fence between the entrance road of our RV Park and this unused building hides most of what is beyond but does not deter the blackberries that dangle along its top.  Mingled with an occasional sprig of red currant berries and a few blooming wildflower vines, the blackberries seem to beg for an artist’s stroke on paper or a photograph.  Bees from their hive hidden in a bush on the opposite side of the road busily rush to and fro and swirl through my imaginary painting.  They are on missions to gather other bounty from the late summer’s offerings and do not pause with me or on the berries. 

All of this happens within the narrow confines of a driveway in the middle of a city block lying between two major highways.  So many will never know the pleasures of this brief moment with nature as I walk.  I have been provided with a glorious example of the eternity of nature and the awe it evokes.  The city fades away from my consciousness and the cool morning air encourages me to walk further.  What other stories will be told to me as I travel this temporary path in our travels?