Rain

A summer thunderstorm rolled in this afternoon and has continued into the evening. The smells (water saturating dry air and dirt), the sounds (the steady patter of rain hitting the earth, thunder rolling across the sky), the colors (gray, dark gray and darker gray; deep greens): they have reminded me of time spent in the woods, when my only shelter was in a creaky log building, a leaky teepee, or a flimsy tent.
Near Yellowstone National Park, a favorite camp of mine is situated at the top of a valley between a lake of the woods to the east and a large drainage basin to the west (think wooded valley with a creek dissecting it that stretches for a couple of miles). Clouds would bunch up in the western sky, gradually darkening as they crept eastward. Rain would often precede the thunder with its steady, soft thumping. The thunder grew increasingly louder until it hovered over the top of you, at times pounding right as lightning hit, and if you were lucky enough to be in your teepee at night during one of these storms, the lightning was so bright it would silhouette the trees through the teepee canvas.
I would lie in bed listening to all the sounds of a thunderstorm: water dripping onto the teepee, rolling towards the ground; trees swaying in the wind; bushes and leaves and branches catching the water and then letting it fall when it became too heavy. Life coursed through the forest during these storms, and I often found myself sucking that life in.