The End of Summer

I was 10 minutes from home when I drove onto wet pavement. The predicted rains had obviously started in east county. Soon the windshield was littered with mist, and then it began. Woosh! Rain pelted the car, bounced up from the road. A tropical downpour at 60 degrees in the temperate north. I could barely see the road. Then I turned into blackness on the narrow and deserted road that leads to the ridge. When I made the second turn onto the ridge road I was greeted with wisps of cloud. It was raining so hard the clouds had been forced to the ground and were bouncing along lightly, lit by my headlights, fleeing downhill. Visibility was, I must say, poor.

With relief I turned onto my narrow gravel drive and crunched up to my animal area. There I sat in the car, in my cotton sweater, slacks and sandals, trying to talk myself into leaving the warm dryness of the car for the large wetness of the outside. I was wet in seconds. I'd just made it to the safety of the building when I was nearly bowled over by a huge white dog headed in. Charlie looked at me accusingly, as if I should have been here when the rain started to let him in.

I did all the chores I could think of inside, and stood at the door with Charlie, watching the wall of water. "We'll wait a few minutes. Maybe it will slack off soon." It didn't. It got worse. The sky is trying to make up for a summer's worth of drought in a single night. Charlie couldn't believe I was forcing him back into that rain, but we had to get up to the house. By the time I got in I was soaked from head to toe, mostly from multiple wet dogs vying for the open door into summer.

Autumn has officially begun.