Written by Adeline J. Wells
Monsoon season is a lengthy one this year. It stretches on listlessly, a sleepy tint that continues to stain our skyline grey. Monsoon season, the name desert dwellers dub days that reign from mid-July through August, into September as we near autumn’s fall. It sounds more scholarly, I suppose, that ‘monsoon season.’ More cerebral than ‘late summer’; of more breadth than simple ‘August.’ Monsoon season, a term locals pitch like candy when offering reasons for the clouds that dip between the hills, for the tightness that haunts their joints, humidity that plagues the air even as days turn to sleepless nights.
Monsoon season is the encore of maddening Mojave summers. It is the handheld bow; roses carried across the stage and cradled as its curtain tumbles down. Summer, this place’s Achilles heel; the season that bears the question as to why people choose to live here. Summer always seems to arrive too early and extend its stay for too long. It bids farewell as those endless desert days begin to shorten in increments, gloom seeping in earlier time. Moisture begins to swell in the air, smothering us beneath its weight, a burgeoning balloon that never seems to break. It accompanies clouds that drift in on creeping winds, hovering darkly about the sky. Clouds that are often too thick for the sun to sufficiently break; they float low on the horizon as it fades through blue to black, barely allowing for beams of color in between. They stay and sheathe the moon as she rises, light muted and milky. Too often stars become illusions, mere tricks of the mind beyond the gauze.
Monsoon season is the encore for our peace season, bordering the edge between ‘season’ and off. The rains make for a dramatic applause before groves of tourists rise and take their stand, cars clogging the highway that wraps along our valley, through the canyon to down below. Their arrival fills our sparse streets, reminding everyone that this is a town built on tourism, and that tourism comes with a price paid via traffic and lengthy waits at the local Country Kitchen. Until then, however, we find ourselves growing used to open roads, to silence that hugs midnight skies. We envelope ourselves in solitude; morning baths last longer, sweeter under stillness. We slip into sleep earlier, exhausted from heat and wind, eyes dropping closed to trickles from swamp coolers. It is the time to recharge in this place, to stay inside and rest the way they do in winter elsewhere. Think of this as your shoveling snow, my uncle suggests, a man who loves hot, dry desert days. The mercury etches towards 110; that has to be worse than this.
Monsoon season, we sigh as another grey day rises; as afternoon rays wear thin. The fragment of our year when we feel almost accustomed to rain; umbrellas move from car trunks to backseats. Thunder shatters evenings’ quiet and mornings drip with strained yellow light, soft patters echoing throughout our homes. Skies darken as doors are cracked open; the fragrance of creosote and scorched Earth become heady, intoxicating; we can’t breathe deep enough. Desert rain; one of those scents that consumes a person; a lover we always chase but can never hold for too long. It dwells along the mountains’ shadowed sides, its sweetness lingering long after they bloom back to blush. Falling gently to replenish this land as the curtain tumbles down, and the lights come on again.
