I was headed out for my daily hike. There was thunder in the distance.

“It’s getting lighter,” my husband, Peter, said. “I don’t think we’re going to get any rain.”

The air smelled like a storm to me, but what do I know? If my dog, Milo, were still alive, I would have asked him. Milo would huddle in the corner of the kitchen when a thunderstorm approached.

“There’s no storm on the radar,” Peter would tell him. Milo didn’t care what the radar said. We called him “Doppler Dog,” because if Milo was in the corner, bad weather was never far behind. But Milo is no longer with us and I was headed out on a hike.

“Do you think I need a hat?” I asked. If the sun came out, I’d want a hat.

“I don’t think you’ll need it,” Peter assured me.

It might be worth noting that both Peter and I grew up on the plains of the Midwest where you can see a storm coming from miles away and the weather is predicted accurately to within the quarter of an hour. We live in the mountains now and things are different.

I left the house without a hat and it started to rain before I’d even made it to the trail. That might have been a good time to turn around. I didn’t.

I go on my hike almost every day. I hike in the snow and the drizzle and the cold.

“There is no bad weather,” a naturalist in Alaska once told me, “only inappropriate clothing choices.” I like that.

So, when it started to rain, I wished I had my hat. But the weather was warm and, as Peter pointed out, it was getting lighter up ahead. Unfortunately, that’s not where the weather was coming from.

By the time I got to the trail, the rain was steady but it wasn’t cold. I started walking faster.

It was just as the trail goes into a ravine that the sky opened up. A sheet of rain fell and, in moments, I was as wet as it was possible to get. I was now going at a brisk trot.

It couldn’t have been more than five minutes later that the sky crackled with lightning. I have never had thunder crash so close overhead in my life. My hair would have stood on end if it hadn’t been plastered to my head. The lightning and thunder were simultaneous, so I figured I had walked smack-dab into the middle of a summer storm.

The rain was now coming down in buckets and the entire trail had become a swiftly flowing stream. I needed my hiking poles to hop along the newly formed riverbank -- jumping from one rock to another, my boots filled with water, my eyes stinging from the rain -- and all I could think was, “Oh my gosh, it’s good to be alive!”

By the time I was headed home, the rain started to slow. It came to a stop about a half-mile from home. I noticed the puddles getting smaller until the ground was nearly dry.

Peter was surprised when I got home. “You sure hiked fast today!” He had no idea what had been happening just a couple of miles away. At our house, it had hardly rained.

I got in a hot bath and, as I washed the mud off my legs, I knew I would never have gone on that hike if I’d known how bad it would get.

And I was so glad I hadn’t missed it.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

I noticed my wrists were sticking to my desk.

This was a gradual awareness. I spend almost all day at my desk and I don’t know precisely when it started, but I finally looked down because my wrists were undeniably sticky. I had used the wrist rest in front of my keyboard for ... well, forever, and I’d noticed there were a few rips in the fabric. This had apparently progressed, completely unnoticed, until the wrist rest had started to ooze some awful sticky substance, which was now stuck to my arm.

“How did this happen?” I asked myself.

I have a friend whose father was a hoarder. She described the process whereby the house slowly filled with his stuff. He would conquer one room and then, almost imperceptibly, move into the next room until one day, the family found they could no longer use the kitchen range because it was piled high with stuff.

“How does this happen?” I asked her.

I remember a trip across the country when my husband, Peter, and I came upon a mobile home, sitting by itself, completely covered in a faded blue tarp. I assumed the home was abandoned until I saw there was a light on. The light was kind of hard to see because all the windows were covered with the blue tarp.

“How do you get to the point where you are living under a blue tarp?” I asked Peter.

“Gradually,” he said. I think this is probably true.

I’m guessing there might have been a way to fix that roof that would have allowed the occupants to see out the windows. But they probably thought this would work for a little while. Then one day turned into two, two days turned into months and, after a while, they got used to it. Who needs curtains when all your windows are covered with a blue tarp?

I am spending more time in my house than ever before and it has caused me to notice things.

One morning I was waiting for my coffee to warm up and I got to looking at the poster we have hanging in the kitchen. The poster predates our marriage. I remember how I liked it when I first saw it -- a cheerful print of peppers in shades of red and green with the names of the peppers underneath. I took a good look at that poster for the first time in ages and realized there were no longer red and green peppers on it. All the peppers had faded to various shades of pale pink and baby blue. Furthermore, the frame had come unglued and there was a giant gap where there shouldn’t be. The whole thing looked dreadful, and it had been hanging there in plain sight for who knows how long without me noticing.

“Peter! The pepper poster looks awful!” Peter took a look at it.

“You’re right,” he agreed.

“How did this happen?”

I am replacing the pepper poster with a new poster of peppers. They are brightly colored and hopefully will stay that way for a few years.

In the meantime, I am looking around the house as if seeing a newly discovered land, trying to see what I no longer notice. (Why is there a box of cookies tucked behind my printer? Why are there peat pots stacked on the washing machine?) It is a revelation, looking at my house anew.

And it’s probably a good exercise. I’d like to do whatever I can to keep from waking up one morning and looking out on a blue tarp.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

My husband, Peter, is fascinated by hummingbirds.

This year has been a difficult year for hummingbird watching as there has been a lot of competition at the feeder. First, the ants wouldn’t leave it alone. Then a bear smashed the feeder to bits. Right after Peter replaced the feeder, wasps found it. Peter gave up for a while and took the feeder down, replacing it with a fancy wasp trap that worked surprisingly well. Wasps were lining up to commit suicide in this hive-shaped contraption that Peter filled with sweet liquid. I had to conclude that wasps are not very smart.

“Oh look! There are 200 of my dead companions all gathered together! This must be a great place to eat!”

Once the wasps were thinned out, the hummingbird feeder went back up, just in time for the annual migration of the Rufous hummingbirds. This is always an exciting time for Peter.

The Rufous is not a nice hummingbird -- and I don’t think hummingbirds are nice to begin with.

“If hummingbirds were 10 times bigger, we would hate them!” I tell Peter. He can’t disagree. From my highly unscientific observations, I would estimate that hummingbirds spend one-tenth of their time eating and the other nine-tenths trying to prevent other hummingbirds from eating.

The Rufous is even worse. The Rufous is marginally bigger than the other hummingbirds so, when they move in, they act like the Jets in “West Side Story” -- except they don’t even get along with one another. The Rufous snaps open its tailfeathers like a switchblade to scare the other birds away.

“I’m a big, bad bird!” the Rufous says, fanning its orange tail and looking tough. No one seems to get any eating done. It’s just a lot of posturing and fighting.

“Hummingbirds are dumb!” I tell Peter.

“Yeah, but they’re beautiful!” Peter says, looking at their shiny feathers and delicate beaks.

We have a long wire strung from our neighbors' shed to our house that we hang lights from. I would estimate there is room for 3,000 hummingbirds on that strand of wire but, according to hummingbird logic, more than one hummingbird on the line at a time is a crowd. They fight like mad for one particular spot on the wire while the rest of the space sits vacant.

“Hummingbirds are selfish!” I tell Peter.

“Yeah, but they’re acrobatic!” Peter says, watching them dip and dive to drive one another off the wire.

I’m sure someone smarter than me could explain what sort of evolutionary advantage all this fighting over nothing accomplishes. It seems utterly pointless. But, perhaps that’s how all fighting seems when looking at another species.

It is only as the sun is setting that the hummingbirds set aside their antisocial games. They seem to realize that if they are going to get anything to eat, they are going to have to do it before it gets dark. All the bravado and all the squabbling ends in the last moments of the day when they finally get down to business and take care of themselves.

For this brief period, right before hummingbird curfew, the hummingbirds forget their differences and sit together at the feeder -- nine at a time, side by side -- and suck down the nectar they will need to make it through the night.

“Better hurry up!” Peter says to the last stragglers. “Night’s coming!”

I think I know just how they feel.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION