In these days of rain, rain, rain, and more rain, I am reminded that loving Nature, respecting Nature, is no simple, easy, gentle thing. She has a dark face too, the goddess of destruction: fierce Kali, the Dark Madonna, the Old Bone Woman, Sedna and Baba Yaga rolled into one. Paradox and contradictions lie at the heart of Nature and myth, of art and storytelling, of a life lived with honest passion and conviction. Water falls as a precious blessing in the desert, water swallows up towns and train tracks here....the same sacred element in different guises: desired and dreaded, prayed for, cursed, and feared.

Today I want to bless, not curse, the rain. I want to bless, not curse, the dark sides of Nature...and of my nature...while striving to keep both sides in balance. This is not to ignore or excuse destruction and suffering, but to acknowlege its place in all our lives...the dark side of the very wildness I love. In his poem "Inversnaid," Gerald Manley Hopkins asks:

What would the earth be, once bereft
of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wilderness and wet;
Long live the weeds, and the wilderness yet.

A blog note: I had a few more desert pictures on my camera that I never got around to posting during our busy time in Arizona, so I went back to those posts and added a few extras (for anyone who might be interested).