We experienced a quite unusual occurrence on Monday. It was one of those days when thunderstorms kept whacking through the area, interspersed with brief appearances of sun flooding the saturated environment with a golden glow and warmth, because it was also quite incredibly hot, at 34-degrees Celsius. I’d been cleaning the house, my husband had been involved in one of his many spur-of-the-day activities, when finally at four in the afternoon we’d both finished our chores and decided to take ourselves out to the ravine for our daily walk. It would be a shorter walk than usual, we thought, because we were both kind of tired, and it was late, relatively speaking.

            As things turned out it was even shorter than we’d anticipated. We ended up going over the first bridge, up the hill and up over the tallest part of the ravine, then down again to the last descent before we hit the last ascent to the street above. And we did it in double-quick time. Even Riley quickened his usual lackadaisical pace, uncomfortable at the suggestion that he might be left behind since we were going at such a swift pace.

            When we had set out for the walk, just as soon as we’d exited the house we heard thunderclaps nearby. Looking up at the sky we could see nothing but black-and-blue clouds, some darker than others and all scudding along at a fairy hefty pace, because it was windy and it was getting even windier by the moment. Clearly, yet another storm was brewing. Yet there had been so many throughout the course of the last few days we thought surely they had exhausted themselves. And we thought the chances seemed iffy, but possible that if we really hot-footed it we could outrun any oncoming storm.

            Don’t ask me why we made such an absurd assumption given all the warning signals, especially the booms from above; they could hardly be misconstrued, they heralded serious storms and related downpours. But we set off anyway, eschewing raingear because it was so hot. 

            The wind kept gearing up, and it kept getting darker and darker as we slithered about on the morass that all the rain had made of the trails. We kept urging Riley on, to proceed a little faster. As we came to the first bridge we observed the first casualty of the day, a large old tree had somehow been persuaded to twist near the base and fall directly over the creek, its branches and green leaves crushed in a sodden heap on the opposite side. Ominous.

            We heaved ourselves up the slippery slope after the bridge to attain the height along which we meant to proceed, hoping that if the deluge did come, the canopy would help to keep us from drowning in it. And then we heard it; heavy volumes of rain coming down, smacking against the foliage above us. We expected that the already-soaked leaves wouldn’t keep us dry and we were probably right, but we kept dry anyway, despite the pounding of the rain above us. The wind became more blustier, and soon enough it was dark enough to emulate night; everything took on a strange, vibrant hue, overwhelmingly green, and the winds raged above, while the sound of the boughs and tree trunks clanking against one another and the leaves taking their sodden hits of rain pounded in our ears. Still, we were dry.

            Eventually we exited the trail and found ourselves on the street, wind still moaning through the trees bending under their influence, the street looking like dusk had long since descended, street lights on – and though vestiges of the last rain still drenched the street there were dry patches where the wind and earlier sun-peeks had begun the drying-out process. It hadn’t, after all, despite the thunder, the lightning, the sound and the fury, the dark and the unmistakable odour and sound of rain, actually rained.

Soon enough, though, it did, ferociously.