Storms

Summer storms are here. I watch the clouds build and break over a massive canvas that is more than ready for the paint of rain.

For a moment I catch my breath. I hold in the fresh cut taste of lightly washed air.  Flashes of the east, so long left behind, flutter through my hands.  Taking a moment I flipped through my remembered photo album, I touch it with a soft smile. 

The east is a beloved relative that I haven't visited for many a long over due holiday.  I see the green, the fire flies, and I wish I had known that last road trip down the coast was the last until someday.  I wish I had stayed for just a few more moments by the harbour and inhaled the mist from the sea. 

Opening my eyes I exhale the memory.  The over development is burning off already in the blazing white light.  Clouds begin to disappear and open a window to the baking blue behind. I am grateful for my best friend, without him this place would still feel as remote and alien as the moon.  With him, this is home.

Living is a very strange and interesting thing.

Wow...

Wow…

How many ways are there to say wow? Or is that the only way?

Monday was a golden glow of morning sun, kittens in the yard, coffee delivered for a quick visit in the afternoon warmth, opening loot, and drowning in a dinner of sushi………ooo I also did homework which translates that I was drawing…. Such a perfect day! How loved and lucky I am to have my life. I have decided that thirty is awesome.

And I will lose ten pounds to celebrate this too.

Sigh of happiness….

Tuesday…. Tuesday evening we met at a Junior High’s school field just north of where we live. I looked up to the little hill and thought… ok, nerve wracking but I think this is ok, that’s not that far.

Then we drove up a winding dirt road, and we drove and we drove and then we were dropped off at a corner in said road. Far far away sat the now tiny little patch of green. I decided that the green must not have shrunk but must be REALLY far away. Would we make it?? I eyed the houses, roads, hills down below.

This was my first mountain site and we were high enough up for me to be very impressed. I watched the first several take offs carefully, how did they pull up? Did they run long enough?

My take off was fairly clean, the wind was practically nonexistent and each of us glided their “shower curtain” through smooth crisp air to the distant green field without a remote issue or care in the world. I watched the little kids, boys mostly, run up to the pilot landing before me. I skidded slightly on my landing and I hopped up elated to high five my coach and new friends.

Flying is just awesome.