Terlingua Rain
The sun bears down on clay flats, radiating waves of haze and mirage, the expanse is both infinite and claustrophobic. There is a heaviness to the air, at once serene and oppressive. The dry heat keeps building, well past the point of any hope of relief. As if it is the only thing that ever has or ever will exist. Then, a sudden darkness, a crash of thunder, as the sky breaks open.
A torrential rain louder than a train rushes towards you from over a distant ridge. At once, the landscape is transformed. Where moments before stood a cracked and barren surface there is now a flowing river, faults in the clay smoothed to the point that you cannot distinguish where earth begins and water ends. In the wake of this monsoon a lush field of ephemeral life will burst forth across the desert.
