Like a drug

If this smell came in a bottle, I'd drink it.

And bathe in it. Cook with it, pour it everywhere, inhale the vapors. Let it consume everything.

The first rain. It starts with some clouds building; big, whipped cream kinds of clouds, flat and dark on the bottom, tall and puffy on top. Then the temperature drops a few degrees, the wind shifts, the thunder rolls in from the distance... Almost imperceptibly the humidity grapples over 10%. And then, at last, the smell comes: the smell of water from heavenward pushing dust and pollen and tired out of the air. Birds cease, bugs disappear.

And I am drawn outside, powerless to resist, to let the sound of the universe holding its breath in anticipation of the first drops waiting to fall to earth. This smell - only in the desert when the ground is hot and the air is suddenly cool and almost, almost wet - is in every pore of my skin, every nook and cranny of my being.

For countless thousands of years this smell has heralded the arrival of rain, and I crave its return every summer.