November Thunderstorm

Monday morning: not quite late November. A silver scrim blurs my view. The heavens have opened and rain is pelting down: a muffled roar on my roof, a solid splash along the eaves. Lightning slices the aluminum sky; aggressive rumbles follow. If the rule is right about the number of seconds between lighting and thunder equalling the number of miles away a storm is, it is directly overhead.

I usually think of a thunderstorm as a dramatic, precipitate summertime phenomenon. The sky blackens. Lightning and thunder battle for supremacy. Rain flattens gardens and lacquers the leaves and lawns. Fierce winds down branches. Sometimes a summer tempest seems sensuous and invites you to run out into its warm, beating wet, like that great scene in Lady Chatterley's Lover. A summer storm is like the best theatre: visually compelling and fraught with tension.

This November thunderstorm feels benevolent, somehow. Not that it's nurturing but it is generous. It has been dry for weeks. Everything is dessicated. And this is Thanksgiving week, after all. Snow would not have been unusual.

And yet, a rainstorm has been unleashed on the landscape. And it is a warm, if not gentle, then considerate one, with little wind. It is not even that dark. In fact there is a luminousness in the light that has coloured the neutral landscape. I see caramel, burnt orange, rust and touches of scarlet appearing in the ragged fields. In the distance, the woods have a dark, gauzy intensity, their branches softened, almost furry. Immediately in front of me, the unshed, drenched leaves of a towering Shaggy Bark Hickory look like copper. I feel encased in a comfortable phenomenon of nature. It is unexpected, unnatural and wondrous.

And now, suddenly, the sun has appeared, burnishing the ether, brightening the wetness below.
What had such import has passed or is no more. Am I changed by it? Affected, certainly. Moved enough to write this. Checking the weather page, I've seen temperatures may reach 66 F. Just before the storm, I'd taken the dogs out into an almost balmy, unsettling early morning. Now , moving into the festivities that signal the beginning of winter, we face a day of eerie welcoming warmth. A maverick thunderstorm opened it. I'm not complaining.
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