how lucky are we to have these wet seasons

Ooh, it's pouring. I love the rain.

I thought I would write a lot about Alberta, about being in the mountains and how beautiful it was, but now that I'm home I'm not quite sure what to say. I'm always struck by the otherness of places--I wonder if people who like to travel feel that the same way. It awes me how two places not so far apart can be so different. My body never quite adjusted to the altitude, which gave most of my time there a dreamlike quality. The scenery only adds to that sense--the hugeness of the mountains, looking down on the tops of trees that I know are five times my height and seeing them the size of trainset toys. We drove through an area that had been hit by a forest fire a few years back, and at first I thought it didn't look so bad. I didn't really get it about how fire jumps and leaves whole stands of trees untouched while burning everything around them. As we drove on further, though, there were more and more trees just scattered on the ground, as though someone had spilled a box of straws.

It made me quiet. The rain gives me the same feeling. Everything is so much bigger than me.