What a show! What a show! After an hour or more of lying in bed, at four thirty in the morning I began recording the pounding and the shaking brought on by what would be an epic rain in California. A series of two, three , four flashes of lightning shone as the ground shook with tremendous blasts of thunder. The rain itself was not to be outdone by the other displays of power. The rain ‘s pounding was constant, with occasional crescendos in its pouring.

The audio recording does not capture the thunder The experience of the whole event defies description, but as I lay, struck with awe, it was as though Beethoven‘s “Ode to Joy” was being played at high volume in the room. I was surrounded and lifted by a massive chorus of benediction, with all of nature exulting around me.

The day before the rain we were crushed by what had to be readings in the 90s for both heat and humidity. What had been the increasing, inscrutable force of the equatorial heat climaxed in an explosion of the heavens washing over sticky bodies with a breeze that assuaged and soothed. And this, I’m told, is the “dry” season in the Equateur Province of the Congo.