It’s July, and I’m sitting in a backyard in Flagstaff, Arizona, when I feel something wet hit my arm. It’s the first drop of rain that’s touched my skin in months, and the pleasure is exquisite. Not just the pleasure of water touching my moisture-starved body, but the sight of thunderclouds after weeks of uninterrupted […]
When Alson Kelen was young, he used to lie at night against his father’s arm, on an island where there were no lights and no cars. He listened to waves slapping against wet sand, the breeze shaking the palm fronds, the delicate crackling of a coconut shell fire. As the purple-blue evening gave way to night, […]
It has been raining for three days now, really raining, the kind of rain that can only occur in a place that receives upwards of 7 meters of rain a year. Three days ago, water began pouring out of the sky the way it might during a tropical afternoon storm or a monsoon — a […]