#Fi50: Joy in Abundance

  

What is #Fi50? In the words of founder Bruce Gargoyle, "Fiction in 50: think of it as the anti-NaNoWriMo experience!" Pack a beginning, middle and end of story into 50 words or less (bonus points for hitting exactly 50 words). I post a theme for each month's Fi50 here.

The rules for participation are simple:

1. Create a piece of fictional writing in 50 words or less.
That’s it!  But for those who wish to challenge themselves further, here’s an additional rule:

2. Post your piece of flash fiction on your blog or (for those poor blog-less souls) add it as a comment on the Ninja Librarian’s post for everyone to enjoy. 
And for those thrill-seekers who really like to go the extra mile (ie: perfectionists):

3. Add the nifty little picture above to your post (credit for which goes entirely to ideflex over at acrossthebored.com) or create your own Fi50 meme pic….
and 
4. Link back here so others can jump on the mini-fic bandwagon.
I post on the last Sunday of the Month, but feel free to post anytime in that week or even earlier (you'll just have to wait until mine goes up to share your link).

Joy in Abundance

Perspective is everything.


When it’s been dark for months, a ray of sunshine causes ecstasy. When it hasn’t rained for a year, even a light shower is excuse enough for celebration.


I suppose that’s why the children are wallowing naked in the mud this afternoon. Celebrate the abundance you have.

***

It occurs to me that it might be nice to include a heads-up for next month's post--the week of January 28. The prompt is Snowglobe.  Prompts can be the title of the story, or just something that gets you started thinking.

Also--please drop some suggestions for new prompts into the comments! I'm running out! 

And while we're at it...Merry Christmas! See you on Friday, when I post my Flashback Friday post--I'm taking the week off.

Friday Flash Fiction: How the Rain Gets In

This week, Chuck Wendig challenged us to write a title for a story. Someone will pick the title and write the story next week. I saw no reason not to get two stories out of the immense collection of titles that accumulated in just a few days, so I took this one by "amydrees" for 891 words (a bit short of 1000!), and I'll pick another next week.

I should dedicate this to all my backpacking buddies. I left the PNW a long time ago, and haven't done a whole lot of backpacking in the rain since--until this past July, when we got caught pretty good. It wasn't as bad as this, though...

How the Rain Gets In

It starts small. After months of drought, you are glad to see rain, and don’t give much thought to anything but ending the drought. Happy plants, lakes refilling. You sort of forget what rain can do.

That was how it is for us. We’re hiking, so we stop to dig out the rain gear, to strap on the pack covers we had nearly given up on carrying. It is still warm, though, and we are happy. Our tent is good; we’ll stay dry.

That’s the first day. We cook dinner in the shelter of one of the big trees, the sort that sheds the rain for the first few hours, and raise a mug of tea to toast the end of the drought, even while we laugh. In the backs of our minds we figure the drought will probably be right back the next day. One rain shower. A diversion along the way.

It rains all night, though and in the morning we eat granola bars so we don’t have to cook in the rain, and pack up a wet tent. That’s the first way the rain gets in: you pack up the tent wet, and you get to camp and set it up wet, and it stays wet and gets wetter.

The rain continues all day, steadily ramping up to a downpour. The trail gets puddled. Sometimes it’s a stream, and our boots get wet.

By noon, we want to go home. Rain gear can only do so much, and we can feel the dampness spreading from the shoulders down. We imagine it seeping into our packs, finding every pinhole or tear in the plastic bags that protect vital insulation. It doesn’t feel so warm anymore, either. The summer rain is fast becoming an autumn storm. Maybe the drought really has ended. If this is fall, it could rain for days. We’ll never dry out.

Huddled under a tree, we talk it over. Fifteen miles to the road. Push on, maybe get there by dark, but probably not? We’d never manage to hitch to town in the dark. Might as well put up the tent now and get warm and dry, hike out tomorrow when we stand a chance of getting home.

The trees no longer have dry spaces under them. The rain drips through the branches in a steady patter, heavy raindrops consolidated into still larger drops that land with a soaking splat on head or pack. We tell each other how happy we are that the rain has come. This should dampen the enthusiasm of all those fires, we tell each other delightedly. The mountains need rain, we remind each other with big grins.

We are very good at lying. Inside, we feel the rain creeping into our veins.

It’s tough, getting the tent up without getting it even wetter inside than it already is. We pitch a tarp, which is really just the ground cloth and barely large enough to shelter the tent, let alone us. We put up the tent underneath, deploy the rain fly, and wonder at all the tiny pinholes and little rips it’s accumulated. Why did we never notice that before?

It’s wet inside the tent, though not as wet as outside. The rain comes in with us, and our gear. Pine needles stick to everything, so it’s not just wet, but dirty. We used to be used to this. Too many seasons of drought make us cranky about the rain. Those grins are starting to slip. Inside, we want the drought back, just for another day.

We eat our cheese and crackers in the tent. If the bears want to come and get us in all this rain, let them. Food, and dry clothes, make things look better. The rain retreats to the exterior, drumming its soothing rhythms on the fly. We sleep the afternoon away.

The debates resume as dinnertime nears. Should we get out and cook? The rain hasn’t stopped. We are reminded that this is the Pacific Northwest. The rain might not stop until summer. If we hike hard tomorrow, we can be to the road by mid-afternoon. We have enough cheese and crackers. We don’t need to go outside and get wet again. We eat.

The first drip lands on a sleeping bag as we are finishing the Snickers bars. We look up, and see another drop starting to form just to the left of the center pole, and we know one of the pinholes is leaking. That’s how the rain gets in: one slow, inexorable drop at a time.

Does duct tape stick to wet tents? We find a coin, the nickel we use to open the bear can, and flip it to see who has to go outside and try to patch the fly. In the end, we both go out, because that’s where the bathroom is. Duct tape first, then step behind a tree, cursing the rain that seeks the chance to dampen our dry clothes.

When we come back, the rain follows us in again. We try our best, but everything is a little more damp, a little less warm. It’s going to be a long night. We’ve slept too much all afternoon, and it’s getting cold. We start to snap at each other.

The rain has gotten in.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

Had to borrow a rainy-day shot from my spouse, as my own camera stopped working when the rain started, and didn't resume proper function until it dried out.

Check out the sequel, "Weather Permitting"

Photo Monday: Pt. Reyes National Seashore

Our recent rain (something rare enough here this winter to cause rumination) made me think about another wet February weekend, when we went out to camp at Pt. Reyes National Seashore. We have actually done that a few times, and many dayhikes there, as well as a couple of epic bike rides (including one where we did the last 10 miles in the dark, with one working headlamp for two of us, and temps dropping to the low 40s). I thought I'd share a few cool facts about the park--part of our National Park system--and some pictures to show how much fun camping and hiking can be, even in the rain.

The Scoop:
The Park is 71,000 acres of Marin County, California, and almost all of it lies not on the North American Plate, but on the Pacific Plate. Go back far enough, and Point Reyes was off Los Angeles. . In any case, the San Andreas fault separates it from the mainland, and is the reason for the long inlet called Tomales Bay. The park is big enough and wild enough to have black bears, as well as a thriving tule elk population (though I've only ever seen the latter), as well as marine mammals including elephant seals. Woods, mountains, seashore, waterfalls, and a lighthouse are some of the features.

The Camps:
The park has 4 campgrounds--and you have to hike to all of them. In February of 2010, we decided to celebrate my husband's birthday by hiking to Coast Camp for the night. We had camped at Sky Camp when the boys were very little, because we could push the jogging stroller up there, but decided the beach would be nice this time.

We got a very late start, and picked up our permit about 30 seconds before the Visitor's Center closed at 5 p.m., so made camp after dark. It was, at least, dry then. Next morning, things didn't look so dry.

Lots of green says that there's been rain all winter. The Park Service provides food storage lockers, as there are some bears in the park--and plenty of coyotes, racoons, and mice who would be happy to eat your breakfast for you.

By the time we'd had breakfast and packed up, the rain had started. On with the rain jackets and pack covers!

Rain or not, we are ready to hike.

Having approached by the shortest route (a bit over a mile, I think), we determined to return via the beach, a two-mile walk.  All the photos from here out have water on the lens...

Contemplating the leap across the raging stream. 

Once you are wet, a little extra exploration doesn't really change anything. When we saw what amounted to a slot canyon in the coastal cliffs, we had to explore. Yeah, a little muddy. What did it matter?

And at the end of the slot canyon, we found something cool:

On a hot day, it would have made a nice shower. Of course, on a hot day, there probably wouldn't be any water.

It wasn't the first rain of the season. When we left the beach, the trail followed a stream inland. Unfortunately, the stream also had decided to follow the trail to the beach.

Anyone bring the water wings??

And because this is California, in the middle of February, there were flowers. Wild iris is one of my favorites.

See? Rain is good! Water droplets make the flower even prettier.

Flash Fiction Friday: Have You Seen the Rain?

This week's Wendig Challenge was another song-title prompt.  I went to Pandora, hooked into the Classic Rock station, and took the second song that came up (because the first was, shall I say, inappropriate).  This one made a story leap to mind at once--maybe a little too obvious, in light of the current drought in California (hard for some areas to believe, but while the Eastern US has been hit with a zillion feet of snow, and there's been flooding in England, the US Southwest has been setting records for lack of rain).  It's exactly 1000 words, including the title.

Have You Seen the Rain?

The clank of the well mechanism, delving ever deeper, had been a part of Eleanor’s world since she was born.  It never stopped, unless something broke down.  It had been a quarter of a century since rain had fallen, and only the pumps kept anyone or anything alive in Foothill.

Most people had left Foothill and the other Valley towns for the northern breadbaskets of Washington and British Columbia, shaking the dust of California off their feet with relief.  Eleanor and her father and brother remained.  They scraped a living of a sort from the parched soil, growing what heat-tolerant foods they could with the slightly brackish water the well now provided.

They couldn’t leave because there were no more machines to take them away, and the draft animals had long since died.  They hadn’t gone when the others did, because Eleanor’s father would not go.  Her mother was buried in the cemetery behind the decaying church.  She had died in the 15th year of the drought, when Eleanor was two and Zack was six.  The stock had died before that, unable to tolerate the brackish water, the heat, and the lack of forage.  Temperatures for much of the year stayed in the triple digits, day and night.  Winter was a thing of the past, and Eleanor thought rain was a myth.

The girl stood before their dwelling and watched the brilliant sunset fade in the west.  Though she knew the heat and the dust killed everything sooner or later, she loved the colors of the sunset.  Even the dry air and dust were comfortably familiar, and the setting of the sun brought a sort of freedom.  The sun was their enemy, beating them down with a physical force that made even thought an effort during its reign.  They worked in the night, when slightly lower temperatures and the absence of the brutal sun made it possible to tend their plants. 

“Come on, El!”  Zack called from the pumphouse.  “We need to haul out the water, then pick bugs.”

Eleanor made a face.  She didn’t need her brother to tell her that.  It was what they did every night.  Bugs seemed to be the only things that survived here, probably because of the small garden.  And they needed every bit of every plant, so they picked the bugs off nightly.  And because they needed every bit of protein they could get, they saved the insects.

Everywhere but in their garden the soil was baked so hard it couldn’t be dug.  When Mother had died, they had been forced to spend a week’s water allotment to soften the ground enough to dig a grave.  Zack remembered it.  There were other families then, but that struggle had been the last straw, and when a government transport—the last—arrived, everyone had left but the three of them. 

When the sun began to rise at the end of the short June night, Father climbed down from the ladder he used to repair the shade structure over their garden.  “Time to go in.”

Eleanor glanced to the east.  The bright band that preceded the sun glowed over the Sierra, the mountains Father said had once been called “Nevada.”  Snowy, whatever that meant.  Eleanor had trouble imagining snow.  She took one last look toward the approaching Enemy and followed Father and Zack into the cave they had enlarged and finished, where the temperature remained tolerable even through the middle of the day.  Father turned on the light and began to prepare their meager supper, frying some of the bugs.  The light was a relic of the old days, and ran on solar power, which gave them a few hours of light in the cave before it began to fade.

They ate their dinner in weary silence.  Then Father took up a book and began to read.  A dozen antique books—real, printed books on paper—filled the place of honor along one wall, and the children had learned to read from them, but they loved best to have Father read to them, though they knew them by heart.

“‘The next day the rain poured down in torrents again, and when Mary looked out of her window the moor was almost hidden by gray mist and cloud. . .’” 

 “Father, have you ever seen the rain?” Eleanor asked.

His face grew sad, and he looked at his children with something like pity.  “Yes.  I was about Zack’s age—14—when the rain stopped.  When I was a child, it rained every winter.”

“What was it like?”

For a long time he did not answer.  Then, “Clouds built over the Sierra, which might be white with snow.  They were huge, white towers in the distance at first, but when they drew close and blocked out the sun, they turned dark and blue-black, like Aggie.”  He looked around as though expecting to see the cat, though it had vanished a year before.

“Then what?” Eleanor pressed.

“Right before the rain came, you felt a blast of cool, damp air, and a gust of wind.  Sometimes, though, the storms would play with us, making thunder and lightning and no rain.  We could see it high in the sky, but it evaporated before ever it reached us, and the lightning started fires.”

That was what had happened to the forests that once come down nearly to their town.  They had burned, huge regions at once, as the dead and dying timber yielded to scant rains and caught easily from the strikes.  Dry lightning, with no rain.

“On the best days, the rain came, like in the book, in torrents, soaking everything and filling the air with a smell—I can’t describe it.  Dust and sage, plants and animals reaching for life.  And none of it did any of us any good,” he said as though to himself.  “There will be no more rain.”  His eyes filled with tears.  “My children will never see the rain.”

##

©Rebecca M. Douglass 2014