2010 Wyoming Writers Contest Winner - NON-FICTION

Wyoming Storms

by Esther Davison

        The clouds draw nearer and thunder threatens to knock out electricity and perhaps damage the computer as I write, but tonight I look with renewed wonder on the beauty of an approaching thunderstorm.  It slowly gathers itself together and puffs itself up like a fighter standing up in his corner ready for the first round.  The once clear sky is gradually overwhelmed with dark billowing clouds towering on top of one another in the west. Brilliant forks of lightning flash on the horizon and the thunder rumbles and crackles around me.  Right now it is just starting to rain, great huge drops that drum on the skylight above me.  It is a sound I love.  The distinctive smell of rain comes rushing through the screen door as the breeze freshens.  The approach of a storm never ceases to thrill me.

        Oh, I know the dangers these storms can bring with them.  I once stood in heart-stopping fear as such a storm brought hail that destroyed the wheat my husband and I had so painstakingly drilled, redrilled, watched, and nurtured for nine, maybe ten months.  Despite my many schemes to protect my gardens, storms have often flattened my precious vegetable garden to the ground, leaving tomatoes crushed and pounded into the soil, never to revive.  I have returned home from a trip to find the storms have served up disaster in my absence: roses and dahlias hanging limply from trellises with shredded leaves and blooms.  Tiny shreds of elm leaves littering the lawn, the refuse of the passing storm. Once I remember the family sitting in a newly - purchased car in the ditch where it had skidded on hail the size of marbles, watching the continuing storm pound the outside of our little car until it was almost unrecognizable from the shiny, smooth treasure  it had once been.  The kids wept quietly with the occasional sniffs or sobs in the back seat as we sat helplessly and watched the destruction of our “new” car.

          And yet it still thrills me to see one approach.  Perhaps it is the expectation of the unexpected.  Perhaps the thrill is akin to the terror one experiences on a roller-coaster.  Perhaps it’s the “anything-could-happen” feeling the settlers must have felt as they journeyed across this land a century ago. What kind of land, they must have wondered, had they wandered into?  What kind of world allows its creatures to watch as danger and violence approach across the unending flatness of the prairie? What sense of approaching doom they must have felt with no place to turn for shelter!

          I have come to believe that the extremes of our Wyoming weather are what I love because they remind me of who I am and the land that is part of who I am.  I recently returned from a ten day trip to England. (Although I was only there for a short time, and although I know it is the usual thing to do, I am going to comment on the weather anyway.)  During that ten-day trip, the sun shone about three days, and only one day for the whole day.  Even on the days when the sun did shine, a lingering haze in the air permitted me to go outside without my sunglasses, something an old eye injury rarely permits me to do in the Wyoming summertime.  On the days when the sun didn’t shine, rain fell, silently, either heavily or lightly, but always straight down without the wild gusts of wind that so often accompany our rain.  Somehow the rain and the sun acted in a gentlemanly, very British way. “We wouldn’t want to go to extremes now, would we, old chap?”  I saw no thunderclouds; I experienced no violent winds that shook the trees and caused the electric lights to flicker. No, instead, rain fell in sedate abundance and the sun came out afterwards with a fair degree of good British dignity and aplomb, nothing extreme.

          So, perhaps the violence of our weather is a picture in some small way of those of us who live here.  We are not always as “proper” as we should be.  We are sometimes unpredictable and violent.  Our connection to the land runs deep. In its own way it expresses the pioneer in all of us.  It helps us understand our place in the universe.

          And when the sun shines in Wyoming, it shines with a brilliance that warms the body and cheers the soul.  I like to believe that we enjoy life with a little more vigor than those who seldom experience our extremes of weather.

          I arrived home from that trip in the evening, and the next morning, after a not-so-restful, jet-lag sleep, I awoke to the sun in my eyes and the meadowlarks singing.

          “Ah yes, I’m home,” I said as I stepped outside and then immediately went back inside to find my sunglasses.

          No such sun shines now as the clouds roil and swirl above my head and the rain falls like a driving wall outside my windows.  I am deafened by the sound of pounding raindrops on the skylights.  I pull on a sweater and stand on the porch just out of reach of the rain and slightly sheltered from the wind.  I can already see a bright line of clear sky in the west although around me there is nothing but the thrilling violence of a storm on the Wyoming plains.  Ah!

          My independent spirit rises to reflect that of the storm and I am again glad I live in Wyoming.