Predictable Patterns

 

Predictable Patterns

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You probably are different. In contemplating my life, I find myself to be much too predictable. Oh, I’m flexible enough. I change plans on a whim, daily. My major patterns, however, can be easily predicted.

Every year, the first week in September, I begin to grumble that the rainy season is over and done. Oh, we may get one more drenching rain, but, predictably, the rains run elsewhere and our dry drags in rolling dust along the way.

This year, the entire month of September was wonderfully wet, rains nearly every night and some days. The first week in October I had to stand on my tongue to keep from grumbling, enough, already. I’ve plans for the dry.

To add to my burden of dissatisfactions, cloudy days drag me down into the mugdumps while sunny days lift my spirits inordinately. October is historically, here in this part of the world, sunny and dry and windy but calm by Montana standards, with cool mornings and warm afternoons. Perfect. Usually. Mid-month and I wonder if November might be dry.

October, despite the never-ending rains, still smells like October, spicy and earthy.

Not all patterns make me grumble. This one took me a while to notice. Every morning Lola and I walk out our gate and down the lane, around the corner and up to the highway, turn about, return. We do this two and sometimes three times a day.

What I didn’t notice, or perhaps misinterpreted, is that if Puffer, Josue’s pup going into doggy adolescence, doesn’t hear my belled gate open, Lola goes into their patio and gets her. At first, I thought Lola was checking out any leftover food (dogs don’t leave leftover food) that she might scarf up.

It took me a while to realize Lola was getting Puffer to share our walkabout. Once Lola rouses Puffer, who doesn’t take much rousing, she pretty much ignores her. Puffer is a pup and Lola is getting to be an old woman. Pup she is, but Puffer is an amazingly gentle and quiet pooch, for a pup. I attribute that to Lola’s teaching.

As predictable as they generally are, these wets and dries can fool us. It happens. Take the rainy wets, for instance. What if, while meandering past on their way elsewhere, Rain becomes enamored by the Trees, waving kisses at the clouds, making winds that grabbed them and corralled them back around to stay awhile. Ah, love, powerful is love.

You do know that is how wind is made, right? The trees wave their branchy arms and winds begin small, grow and mature and whoosh around the world, sometimes creating havoc, sometimes creating romance.

Or perhaps  Dry stops in at a local bar for a quick Coca-Cola, plunks a quarter in the jukebox and someone shoves a Tequila Sunrise in its hand and just like that, without thinking, Dry begins drinking. One drink follows another down the dry throat and next thing you know, fighting breaks out, and our dry hero is incarcerated in the local hoosgow for a period of dry contemplation.

Eventually, time served, our Dry will show up, dry again. Romance of rain and trees will wane. Rain, being of a wandering nature, will flit off elsewhere, in search of another love.

What is also predictable, is that two weeks into our dry season, late as it is, I will be grumbling and wishing for June to hurry to bring back our lovely, life-giving, love-giving rain.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 16, 2025

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