June: The Time of Water, of Rain, of Flooding

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it. ~Lao Tzu

The sun setting over the Laramie River

If there's anything to define June in Laramie, it's water.  This is the season of rain and melt off, green and flooding.  May is the last snow fall most years and usually buds and the beginning of green, but June in Wyoming is gorgeous.  The temperatures finally stay in the high 60s during the day and seldom drop below 50 at night.  Snow is replaced by rain.  No more frozen narrow rivers, the banks are flooded.

The mountains, and hence my working site, are still off limits right now, because the snow is still too deep and all the roads are closed.  The pass through the Snowys from Centennial to Saratoga is usually open by Memorial Day (May 30 this year), but this year they say it might not open at all.  There's still ten feet of snow up there, and every night what they plowed, from both sides, the day before is filled back in.  It was quite a winter.

Across the Laramie River from
the bridge, normally 10 feet across,
now about 50.

And boy is the water running off that snow melt.  At the point near the bridge by the park (see picture), it is currently about 50 feet across.  Normal in August is about 10.  No fear of forest fires for a while in this area.  It's just too wet.  It rains most afternoons, and sometimes all day.  The hills and plains are bright green, and the florescent purple glow of lupin is gorgeous.  And the willows, the aspen, and the cottonwoods are loving it.

Down by the riverside.

Yes, this is the time of water, the wettest part of the year, if you don't count snow fall.  And I guess it's not surprising, since we've moved into Cancer now, which is a water sign.  We just moved out of Gemini, and air sign, but the end of Gemini was definitely already water here in Wyoming.

Laramie River at dusk.

Water is fluid (obviously).  It's ever moving, liminal.  It is never the same.  Water is often associated with the feminine.  As is earth.  Earth is stable, though still dynamic, though we often see it as static.  But the plates move, soil and rock erode, the ground up-heaves in winter.  Earth moves and changes, but slowly, and usually we don't notice the change.  Water moves faster, changes faster.  Water can work it's way through granite, and maybe even diamond just through single drops, one at a time, persistent, patient.  Or it can take out a hillside or carve a huge valley in minutes given enough water and enough pressure and gravity.  Water is an agent of change.  Water is emotion, both the calm peaceful joy of a gentle stream or a light rain, and the anger and passion of the rapids in flood season or the deluge of a monsoon or hurricane.  Water is the subconscious and intuition, Fetch, Nefesh.  It is the World of Forms, Yetzurah, the Great Sea of Mem, which is the Womb.  It is Binah, Understanding, the Upper Sea, the Mother.  Water is life.  The surface of the earth is about 70% water, and the human body is 50% to 80% water.  Without water, there would be no life as we know it on Earth.  And there certainly would not be mammals or humans.  The human body can go about forty days without food, but only about three without water.

So, here I am in Laramie, in the Time of Water.  And it is glorious and gorgeous here.


FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss