Hopes for Rain in Times of Drought

When the water is flowing in our segment of a creek that meanders in and out of the invisible property boundaries between our woods and our neighbor’s, I think of the long journey each water molecule is on as it travels toward its ultimate destination, the Gulf of Mexico and beyond into the Atlantic Ocean.

Along the way, it may instead

soak into the earth and slowly,

very slowly,

make its way into the aquifer below before entering the space where our water well

pulls up drinking water that tastes better than any water

I have ever tasted.

Or maybe

it will be pulled away from this flow,

evaporated

into the air to become

part of a cloud that will rain down on a field

or a city or a mountain

hundreds of miles

away.

Whatever its course, its stay here is only temporary, and wherever it flows on land it helps to shape the paths of the streams and rivers to the sea, wherever it soaks into the earth it restores the groundwater we will need tomorrow, and wherever it returns to the atmosphere it brings

hope for rain in times of drought.

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