A friend of mine once remarked that those of us who were raised in deserts become pretty excited at any water-related weather event.
It’s been nearly three years since Corie and I left New Mexico, and we’ll still happily watch a good rainstorm, even when they happen with more frequency than what we were once used to.
One morning this week, Corie gently shook me awake and told me to look outside, where a thick fog made it impossible to see anything except the buildings across the street. Being a former desert dweller who is very guilty of water weather excitement, I grabbed the camera and rode my bicycle off into the fog.
At seven o’clock, the city was just starting to come to life for us humans. The ravens on the other hand were already out and about in full force along the Bega River that flows through the city. The hundreds of birds, perched on the trees lining the river, were cawing over each other, a cacophonous chorus of corvid chatter.
A short distance away, the bells from the city’s Romanian Orthodox cathedral, hidden in the fog, reverberated through the morning air.
Away from the reveling ravens and on the other side of the cathedral, the city’s three squares, Victory, Liberty, and Unity, were slowly waking from an autumn night’s slumber.
Normally filled with tourists, school groups, and people enjoying a leisurely lunch or dinner, the three squares took on a different personality in the morning fog. The few people who were out and about looked like ghosts, gliding silently across an otherwise empty stage.
As the morning progressed, the fog burned off, leaving a cloudless blue sky. The dreamlike dawn faded away into the reality of another working day. Once again, the three squares would host ever-changing crowds of people, unaware of what they had missed in the wonderland of water-related weather.
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