TheBanyanTree: a matter of heat

[Mike Pingleton]

I was finishing up a second rep on the chest flye when there was a
sharp crack of thunder.  I went over to the window and looked out at a
small pocket-sized thunderstorm that dumped ten minutes of rain on the
gym.

My workout was finished so I stepped outside to wait for my ride.  The
last of the rain finished and a rainbow shouldered the sky over to the
east.  Behind the gym is a half acre of restored prairie, tall in July
with compass plants and big bluestem and queen anne's lace.  I stood
on the margin of the prairie under the sun returned and felt the heat
return and smelled the hot wet plants and the hot rain boiling back
into the sky, the hot metallic smell that everyone calls ozone but
isn't, an entire parking lot's containment of bacteria efflorescing in
the brief wet.

I love the heat and the humidity, the heavy wet robe we cringe from. 
This world was not designed for the pleasures of human beings and
despite our every attempt to stamp, corral, fetter and otherwise
transmogrify our surroundings, a July thunderstorm and its steamy
aftermath is enough to send us scurrying into our cool caves.  Light,
heat and wet are all part of a great engine that rolls on, in spite of
us, blind to us.