The Storm

Often in the early morning as I begin to wake up, single memories move through my mind, most are images of places I have been.  Just this morning I awoke yet again to the memory of a desolate road in the southwest. I was driving toward the Texas panhandle on a long journey from Seattle to New York by way of the desert Southwest. Behind me, a storm roiled the sky. Low, heavy, black clouds pushed diagonal streaks of rain and hail across the dry desert of hills and canyons. Ever the back road explorer, I turned right onto a narrow road that ran past remote ranch land. As the storm approached, visions of a flash flood in this arroyo-pocked landscape seemed more possibility than not. My stomach churned with the thought of being swept away by a sudden wall of water. Few buildings spotted the land, only the occasional wood shack with a metal roof to shelter cattle or machinery. There was no escape. After driving a mile or two down the roughly paved, going-nowhere road, I decided to turn the car around. Backing up and then forward, back again and forward, I shifted and turned the wheels until the car was headed toward the road from which I had turned into this nether world of sagebrush, tumbleweeds and lizards skittering across the hot pavement. Watching the storm with nervous apprehension, I neared the main road and turned right toward the Texas border and away from the black sky, the road curving as it followed a dry creek bed. The smell of rain grew stronger.