Hello dear ones,
And welcome to today's story.
The man who spoke to weather.
As always,
Just taking a few moments now to arrive here.
Allowing your mind and body to settle.
Maybe taking some deeper inhales and exhales.
Fully dropping into the here and now.
And when you already deal once.
We shall begin.
The villagers of Amplewick said that Tom Hartigan could smell rain three days before it came.
Which was true.
But not the whole picture.
Tom could hear weather.
Not thunder.
Not win.
That was simply the world being loud.
And anyone could manage that.
Tom heard the intentions behind weather.
The mood of it.
The way you can sometimes walk into a room and know before anyone has said a word.
Whether the people in it are happy.
Or angry.
Or somewhere in between.
He had known this about himself since boyhood.
And had spent most of his 73 years using the knowledge carefully and quietly.
Recommending that his neighbours bring washing in from the line when the sky looked innocent and blue.
Walking out to stand in his garden.
On evenings when the air had a particular quality of gathering.
Of inhaling.
He did not advertise his gift.
He mentioned it as one mentions a reliable instinct.
Modestly and only when useful.
The summer of his 73rd year was different.
It had not rained in Amplewick for eleven weeks.
The fields were the color of old straw.
The river was down to a thread.
The allotment holders stood among their withered beds and wore the carefully stoic expressions of people who have not quite given up hope.
That are beginning to discuss the theory of it.
Tom walked to the top of Beacon Hill on a Wednesday evening.
And stood there for a long time.
The sky,
He found.
Was not indifferent.
It was a frame.
He had encountered this before.
Once.
The year he was 12.
When a long drought had broken with a flood that washed out the lower lanes.
The sky had been afraid then too.
Of its own excess.
Of what happened when the balance had been off for too long.
And the correction was drastic.
This time he understood.
The sky was holding back,
Not from cruelty.
But from a kind of paralysis.
It had stored so much,
That it had forgotten how to begin.
Tom cleared his throat.
He was a private man.
And talking to weather felt,
Even now,
Slightly ridiculous.
But he had lived long enough to do ridiculous things when they were necessary.
You'll need to start somewhere,
He said to the sky.
Which was a deep,
Burnished violet at the horizon,
And utterly still.
And I know it feels like too much.
Like however it starts,
It won't be the right way.
But the fields don't need the light wave.
They just need a way.
The air was very quiet.
The Callahan's have lost most of their barley.
" Tom continued.
And Brenda Marsh planted sunflowers this year,
For the first time.
Which took some courage on her part.
And they've gone all papery now.
And the river well.
You know about the river.
A very small wind moved through the grass.
I'm not asking for a downpour.
I know you're worried about that.
I'm asking for something that begins.
And keeps going.
And finds its measure as it goes.
The way most things do.
He stood there until the light went and the first star appeared.
When he walked home,
Nothing had changed.
The sky was still clear.
The ground was still cracked and pale.
But at three in the morning,
Tom woke to the sound of rain on his window.
A light steady unassuming rain.
That fell without much drama and kept on falling through the morning and into the afternoon.
Pausing only briefly at noon.
As if catching its breath.
Then resuming.
It rained for two days in that patient,
Considered way.
Not enough to cause any damage.
But enough all the same.
Tom did not tell anyone about the conversation on Beacon Hill.
He saw no reason to.
The point had not been to demonstrate anything.
The point had been the much needed rain.
Which was now doing what rain does.
Making the world continue.
In the quiet and reliable way that mattered most.
He went to check on the sunflowers.
They were still alive.
