THis is Monsoon Season for sure in Benson

Southeast Arizona’s MONSOON storms arrive with power, majesty and awe. The sky suddenly turns dark grey, and just as suddenly the rain is upon us.

In the SKP Saguaro RV Park, our home, the streets flow side to side with an amazing flood of water. Downspouts are backing up from the sheer volume of rain providing a thrumming cacophony as it strikes our aluminum awnings and cascades into the gutters.

Lightning is flashing all around us, and the crack of thunder rolls across the sky. Occasionally the thunder pops within a second or two of the lightning flash, indicating just how near is that lethal electricity.

What we do is stay indoors, sit back and smile at this weather, because this is the life-giving water that we pray for the rest of the year. What we don’t do is go outside and try to get video of the maelstrom, the flowing streets, the wash across the road, not 250 feet from our front door.

Tomorrow, as we chat with our neighbors, residents of the 90-or-so lots occupied this month, we’ll not hear a word of complaint about the weather. This is our home, this is what makes the cactus and the Texas Rangers and the oleander bloom so colorfully. This is what the majority of residents who leave for the summer will never experience. Sadly, many of them will also never experience the splendid cactus blooms that we revel in, the amazing bold colors, the sudden overnight flowering, which, often as not, will fade the next day.

This evening’s storm, oddly, is bringing me a new experience: the close-striking lightning is making a click in my hearing aid with each strike! Should I continue wearing the hearing aid? Should I cast it from me like a stinging scorpion? Time will tell;  I plan to continue to wear the aid in order to continue to hear the thunder roll as it slowly moves to the northwest.

Of course, not all monsoon days are like this. Some days are dry, many have shorter, gentler showers; some days have longer soaking rains that will seep an inch or two into the caliche that underlies our park. Some mornings we will awake and have to re-set our electric clocks, as the power has oh-so-briefly quit during the night.

The Ocotillo are in their glory now also, with our Monsoon rains.

We aren’t traveling right now. Medical issues have kept us home. Those same medical issues have guaranteed us a front-row seat under the thunder, brightened by the lightning, and moistened by the summer monsoon in this year of … Our Life on Wheels.