Rain and Hail

Well, it is starting to cool off here. In the past week, it has rained three times. Yesterday morning thre were thumb nail sized chips of ice falling from the sky...Hail. Hard to belive until one flies down your shirt. It rarely lasts here, but it came down in sheets this afternoon. A strong wind blew through for about an hour, sending the camp into a dust storm, the black clouds on the horizon blowing in from the North, chasing away the white Cumulous pillows of the South and replacing them with a dark washing of heavily laden combination Black Cumulonimbus and Grey Stratus. Then it hit. First the pitter patter of tiny pinpricks on the tin roofs of our buildings. Then a steady state of the sound of rain, then a torrent as the water let go flushing away the dirt of months of summer heat. It was refreshing to feel the cool air and the clean sweet smell of the plants, revealed from layers of dust and dirt.

It is clean here at Camp Phoenix. The half moon is bright, occassionally hidden behind a layer of the receding water vapor, disguised in cumulous shapes on the horizon.

The weather is getting slowly cooler. More and more jackets are emerging from the duffle bags and the smokers are going out into the smoker's areas less frequently. Soldiers are preparing for an early autumn, even as the leaves are beginning to turn back home in Oregon. The planet seems to shrink, the miles disappear in the realization that we are truly not so far from each other. "Home Is Where the Heart Is" just as the song lyrics of The Chameleons tells us. The heart here is warmed by the light shining on us from above, a half moon reflecting down on newly washed Kabul. It really is a beautiful place.

-out here