The mother of all storms, Hurricane Patricia, hurtled toward North America’s western coast last week. But she dissipated against Mexico’s rugged terrain and in fragments drifted, drifted across Texas up to our little Bayou in Louisiana. Only the rain reached us: buckets and buckets of rain, pouring hour after hour, then day after day, drenching the parched soil deliciously.
The bayou had been dangerously low; even the unhurried birds had deserted for deeper water. Patricia’s rains changed all that. What was last week a foot or two of muddy trickle has risen to five or six feet of water, moving slow and steady by.
Something about running water currents beckons you to follow, doesn’t it? I left the safety of the sidewalk and tiptoed down beside the water, seeing where it led me, careful not to sink in my heels… And there were the beautiful, gloomy cypress trees with knobby trunks strong against the water’s pull.
And further down, the river broadened. The water twisted and unfurled elegant ribbon designs in the green algae, which had grown on the water’s surface in last week’s stagnation but now could not lie undisturbed.
The soft ground turned to a better path again where the trees thinned.
Patricia, thank you for the rain. We’ll keep it in the Bayou, nursed by the willows and guarded by the cypress.
-The Dauntless Princess-