The wall of rain

09Jul08

July 4.

Vidihna stadium, Lihue.

We sat on the grass, in the dark, facing the sky. As we waited, the flags suddenly snapped taut on their poles. The breeze turned cooler.

Then, from the north, the wall of rain ran toward us. A rolling scream passed through the crowd. Backlit by the stadium lights, a great wall of water raced across the field. Looking up, watching it move toward us, it seemed infinite and inevitable, and all I could do was stare, slack-jawed in disbelief, until suddenly it was in front of us, overcoming us, on top of us, dropping great, fat, tropical buckets of rain.

I’ve driven into rain storms, walked in torrential thunderstorms, outlived a gale in a mountain tent, even seen rain falling from afar, but nothing was like this: the height and breadth and weight of it, the speed and solid mass of it, were faintly apocalyptic.

It was a small avatar, not unlike Annie Dillard’s total eclipse, of something magnificent, and sublime–that thing that inspires beauty and terror in a breath. And now I suspect what I might do in the face of such a thing. Kory and Ella and Finn wisely fled away, sought shelter.

But I stood there, dumbstruck. Staring straight into the face of the storm.

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