storm breaking

The air is like an oven door open - a steam oven.  Normal activities like walking from A to B are like swimming in invisible water.  The white heat from the sun chases us into the shadows. Everything is still, waiting, slow.  Even the monkeys hang in the trees, watching us through heavy lidded eyes. Tails hanging, limbs hanging loosely mingling with the branches.   A loop of vine makes a convenient arm chair in which to snooze. I envy them their ability to climb and live in a tree. There is no coolness - everything i touch is too warm.

Late afternoon and the softest baby breath of a breeze touches my arm. Distant sounds like someone walking across a wooden floor could be thunder. We watch the sky hopefully. A few downy soft cumulus clouds loom behind the house. In the west a dark smudge of sky draws slowly closer.

elephant crossing the road in heavy rainstorm

As darkness falls, a quick flash of light that could have been a torch, flits past the window.  We wait and watch.  There is another, and another. Definitely lightening. A few seconds later, the sound of celestial furniture removals confirm our hopes. Here it comes.

No soft pitter patter this time. The rain comes hard and fast, strobe lit by lightening and celebrated by a triumphant percussion section.  Delicious, mouth watering, skin tingling cool ozone packed air, swirls into our lives and around our sweat caked skin. Body temperature normalises and lethargy slips off our shoulders like a heavy blanket.  It makes you want to dance - truly. Get out there and splash some mud around. But this time we content ourselves with watching the light show that skitters all around us.

nothing to do with this post really

just a lovely sunset visit with a peaceful elephant

the moon in leo

There was a full moon a couple of nights ago. A big amber cheddar coloured beaming thing that climbed steadily up the trees and high into the dark sky.  I learnt recently that each full moon, in the northern hemisphere at least, has a different name. February's full moon is called Wolf Moon, or Hunger Moon, implying deep midwinter, long cold nights and food supplies running low. Keep the wolf from the door until spring ok?

Here in the southern hemisphere we could also have names for the full moon. Every full moon could be called Poachers Moon anyhow, as the monochrome daylight that the moon illuminates our world with, makes it so much easier to get around at night for those with poaching intent. Farmers and Game Scouts across the continent are often sleepless at full moon, for more than biorhythmic reasons.

How does the full moon treat you? I am always spell bound with wonder and feel a deep kinship. It irks me to think of miscreants poking about for water and minerals up there. Surely somethings should be sacrosanct? will future generations look at the moon and see smokestacks?

This month the moon is in Leo.  The constellation of Leo will follow the moon across the night sky, if only we could see it.   We were woken by lions calling as they travelled through the koppies.  In the morning we found their tracks - clear imprints in the soft brown sand.