Monsoon Satori

 Living in Alaska for the first third of my life has given me an insatiable hunger for hot sunlight. When I moved to Bangkok, I became addicted to its temperatures that typically ranged over the full spectrum between 90 and 100 degrees; only the city’s thick humidity made me stop my walking once the thermometer went past the century mark.

Later when I returned to the States and visited my son in Tucson, the combination of high heat and aridity that greeted me was delightful. In this outpost of the Sonora Desert, 100 degrees felt cooler than Bangkok’s 95. Although it took time for me to understand and appreciate the beauty of this sprawling Southwestern city, its sunlight had me hooked immediately.

Most people head off to Tucson in the winter. Not me. As soon as the weather reports predict temperatures of 100 and above, I start looking at airline tickets. The highest heat I’ve enjoyed there is 108 and I relished every second that my skin was warmed by sunlight. 

People who live there love the monsoon season, with its raging thunderstorms and its gifts of rain. This is mercurial weather that comes without warning and has no predictable duration. Several times I tried to catch it and failed, my attempts filled with dryness and brilliant skies, until the day I walked out of the Tucson airport and found the bright air held weight.

There were no thunderstorms and no torrential rains waiting for me on that visit, although the sky was often sullen and spitting rain teased without delivering any real release. When a friend took me on a little road trip, we stopped the car and stood on the roadside to watch the vicious currents and the deadly rush of a monsoon river,  spilling  over a bed that was usually a dry scar on the earth. But Tucson’s river held only a few mud puddles and the low growls of distant thunder never made it in our direction.

I left with no understanding of why my friends long for the monsoon and with a firm resolve to avoid that time of year. But one of the Tucson people I love best persuaded me to come for this year’s monsoon time. It had recently battered the area with large hailstones and uprooted trees, a dramatic assault that made her invitation irresistible.

Once I arrived, I still didn’t get it. The heat was several degrees lower than what I usually walked through in this city but the humidity made it seem much more intense. The sun darkened my skin after the first day and my phone went black within minutes of exposure to the scalding light on the rooftop terrace. The clouds thickened at the end of the day, allowing only a thin stripe of sunset and obscuring a view of the stars. 

In spite of the moisture held in the humid air, I carried a little water bottle that I drank from every few minutes, like a hobo clutching a jug of Thunderbird. My hair began to straighten and my steps were slow. In a city where it was easy to walk eight miles a day, I couldn’t go beyond five. My favorite cliche came to mind--”What fresh hell is this?”

I found the answer to that on my second afternoon when I set off on a pilgrimage to what may be one of the best photography galleries in the U.S. I took a wrong turn and walked farther than I needed to. As I retraced my steps, the sunlight tightened around me like a vise and the final blocks were an endurance test. When I reached the gallery, I sat in the merciful coolness of air conditioning for at least ten minutes before I began to explore the photographs. This heat was beyond anything I’d ever felt before, a threat and a punishment.

I left the gallery a couple of hours later, bracing myself for more time under a scorching sky. Instead I walked out into the pale grey of heavy clouds and a strong breeze touched my face. As I walked, I was certain I felt a raindrop and I longed for that to be true.

The clouds thickened and the humidity was like an anvil. My friend and I both wilted under its weight, wishing  for the clouds to burst, and retreating to the relief of air conditioning. “Text me if you see lightning,” I begged before I went to bed.

I awoke a couple of hours later to the noise of thunder directly above my room. Kneeling on the bed to look out the window that faced the mountains, I saw thin slivers of lightning cut through the darkness, jagged and almost cartoon-like. Greedily I stared at them until one came so close that I was positive a spark of it touched my windowsill. After that I watched flashes of light on the wall while lying on my bed, wincing happily with each thunderbolt. Suddenly there was a new sound, one I hadn’t heard since Bangkok. A tropical rush of rain torrented in a curtain of noise and when I looked outside all I could see was a cascading veil of water.  

And then I understood what comes with the monsoon. I left Tucson with a reverence for its gift of relief and when I woke up to rain in Seattle after my return, in a city where this is a frequent and often annoying occurrence, I felt grateful. It took a taste of the desert’s monsoon to make me honor rainfall and recognize the sacrament of water with its renewal of life.