Rain, Merciful Rain

As you may recall (or may have heard in the news), we in Chiang Mai have been living under a smog blanket for quite some time. For the past few months, I've been feeling it thicken, and thicken, and thicken while we've waited for the rains that inevitably begin to fall in April. Mind you, it hadn't rained a single drop since mid-November. Oh sure, last week during the Songkran Festival (some day I'll tell you about it), a few pitying drops fell. Just enough to whet our appetites.

And, then Wednesday it happened. Rain. Great gusts of wind and drenching sheets of stormy rain.


We rushed around pushing the windows shut and feeling the over-spray on our faces and arms. Our neighbor's kitchen gutter finally filled the dish pan out back. And, when it was all over about twenty minutes later, we could see clearly, for the first time in months, the outline of Doi Suthep, the mountain behind the house. There have been many days recently when the mountain wasn't even there. And, this morning, as Little and I walked back from the coffee shop, I could see not only the outline of the mountain, but individual trees and the red roof and shining gold pagoda of the temple near the peak. Ah, fresh air.