Many years ago I was chaperoning a delegation of youth from the Central Pacific Conference who were attending a General Synod of the United Church of Christ in Ft. Worth Texas. We had flown to Texas together and were staying in a hotel a couple of blocks from the convention center where the meeting was being held. While we were there, the thunderheads began to roll in and the sky got dark for a real thundershower. The youth in my delegation were mesmerized by the dark storm clouds and they all wanted to go outside to look at the storm. It wasn’t easy to get a good look at the clouds because we were in the midst of a city, but if they stood in front of the hotel, under the awning, they could get a pretty good look to the west down the street. I was encouraging them to come inside the building. It was easier to keep track of the youth inside andI was a bit worried that they’d get wet and be uncomfortable in the storm. It wasn’t easy to convince them to come in until the clouds opened up and the rain began to fall. Then they were mesmerized by the amount of rain that fell in such a short time. At least they were watching from inside the hotel at this point.

These were kids from Oregon and Idaho. At least the Oregon kids were used to seeing rain. But they had never before seen anything like a prairie thunderstorm.

I had forgotten the incident until this morning. We’re having a little thundershower here as I rise to begin my day.

It isn’t anything like the storms we are used to having at home.

And I remember the 10 years we lived in Boise. Boise is at the northern end of what has been called the great American desert. It is in a basin with high mountains to the north. The terrain rises so steeply that it wasn’t at all uncommon for me to mow my lawn and then drive less than 30 miles to ski in the same day. In that protected basin there was very little wind. When a thunderstorm did occur, it was a small event. A few flashes of lighting high in the clouds, usually striking somewhere in the mountains, or perhaps a bit of cloud to cloud lightning. The thunder was muted and sounded far away. The wind might blow a little, but not much - perhaps 25 mph gusts. And it would rain a few drops. That was it. I used to say that we had the wimpiest thunderstorms in the world in Boise. No worries, however, our trees weren’t used to any wind at all. 25 mph winds would make branches fall out of them. It takes 60 - 70 mph to make the branches fall where we live now. People would talk about the storms we had and I, having lived in North Dakota, didn’t think that we’d had a storm at all.

Things are really dry in Washington this year. The grass has gone dormant and the highway ditches are all filled with yellow grass. Some of the trees are turning color and it feel like early autumn. There are burn bans everywhere and people are working hard to conserve water. I’m sure that the small amount of rain that has fallen this morning is welcome. It probably will have a refreshing effect on the woods, though I haven’t yet even peeked my head out of the camper. I can smell the fresh air through the open window, however. It is nice. And it was pleasant to wake to the sound of raindrops on the roof of the camper.

I had to listen carefully, however, to know it was a thunderstorm. After a while I did hear a few rumbles and I saw the sky briefly illuminated by a distant flash of lightning. I don’t think that the thunder and lightning would have awakened me had I not been already awake.

By our standards, it isn’t much of a storm. The giant trees around our camper are completely still. Perhaps there is a little bit of movement in some of the needles high in the trees, but they aren’t swaying. In fact it is hard to imagine these forest giants swaying back and forth the way that the pine trees do at home. Probably you can’t have the giant trees that grow here in a place with the winds that we get back home.

I didn’t know, prior to moving to Boise, that you could miss the wind. I had always previously lived in places known for their wind. Big Timber, Montana, has a reputation for some of the highest winds in the state. When we were young, we used to watch for the windspeed instrument to register 0 during a storm. That meant that the wind had exceeded 100 mph and broken the meter again. It happened several times a year. They didn’t make meters that could handle our winds in those days. After college I moved to Chicago, which has a reputation as the windy city. I didn’t find anything particularly unusual about the wind in Chicago, but there usually was plenty of it and I was grateful because the wind refreshed the city. Without the wind it could get stale really quickly. There was too much car exhaust and other air pollution to make the place comfortable unless the wind was blowing. When it blew, we shared our dirty air with the folks downwind. From Chicago we moved to North Dakota where there are real thunderstorms and real blizzards as well.

When we lived in Boise I missed the wind.

I might miss it if we were to live in this place as well, though I know that all you have to do is to head for the coast where the wind does blow almost constantly and I felt a good breeze a day or so ago when we were rowing on an area lake.

So we’ve got a bit of rain. We could use a bit more. Maybe our best blessings are like that. A little, but not so much that you get tired of it.

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