I was born and bred a mountain lass! in the Santa Cruz mountains on the central coast of California, I grew up in a forest of redwoods, douglas fir, oak, ponderosa pine, and a million species of fern and broom! My sister and I would put on our dress-up dresses and go tromping through the woods surrounding our house, big golden retriever tagging along, pretending to be lost princesses. Getting pine needles and dirt and branches and god knows what else all tangled in our hair and big poofy skirts! and you haven't lived through a rainstorm until you've lived through one in a redwood forest -- the constant threat of a twenty pound branch falling from fifty feet up through your skylight or roof certainly kept one on their toes all winter! Every year in the neighborhood, someone's house or car would be destroyed by a fallen tree -- our turn came up the year we moved out, thankfully. A massive dead douglas fir fell on a truck that had been illegally parked in our yard! karma!

There was one big special treat about that rain, though. If you stood outside on a dark cloudy day, you could hear the rain getting caught in the trees before it even hit the ground. It would start with a swishing, as the wind picked up, like waves crashing on a shore. The trees would all sway back and forth like hula dancers. And then a crackling, all over the forest, as the drops of rain pelted the leaves. And finally, you'd patiently look up and close your eyes as you felt the very first drops of rain reach your face. And then it would slowly hit the ground, making little polka-dots and crackling as it hit the gravel and dirt driveway and the old wood of the deck. That was the closest I have ever come to feeling true magic.

(This has been cross-posted from the "Redwood Forest" memories page)