The rain

When it rains in the jungle the moisture seems to come from every side. The drops still follow the path that gravity has set, but the air’s readiness to absorb them, and the moisture being expressed by every object confuses the senses until you cannot be certain from whence they come.

The rain comes shrouded in creeping mist, that rolls over the back of the hills, and spills down the faces until you are wrapped in a downy shroud, but with none of its comfort or warmth, just a cool, detached, seclusion, wispy tendrils sliding forth, adding to the gray mystery, until even the nearest tree is partially obscured causing question as to whether it is really there.

The rain does not, as one might be accustomed, bring refreshment. It cools the air, but thickens it, so that you must swim from place to place, and lungs are unsure how to draw the oxygen from the air. The dampness sets into everything, clothes left to hang after a day’s wear will be retrieved more damp than when they were left, towels may never dry, and we sometimes feel the same.

The result though, is the teeming abundance of life on all sides, the well watered earth eager to produce prolific vegetation, hillsides teeming with life clamoring up out of the ground, reaching high, with exceptional speed. The deepest greens of the jungle testament to the continued abundance of the life giving rains.