What do bodies in bogs have to do with rain in NW Arkansas or a sleepless writer of cozy mysteries? “Hail likely in eleven minutes,” declared AccuWeather. Thunder draws ever closer. Rain has commenced yet again and I can only hope if hail is an actuality, it isn’t large and damaging.
The storm woke me some time during the night–a very noisy storm. When she is awakened from a sound sleep, a dedicated mystery writer would quite naturally stumble back to the computer, pull up the edit to By the Fright of the Silvery Moon, and begin meticulously going through the story. Instead, I opened my iPad, saw an article about the bogs of northern Europe revealing buried secrets, and read the night away. Lightning shivered past my window. Thunder bounced around the heavens. I was lost in the mysteries of bodies found in bogs. These ancient victims of long ago violence were well-preserved by the chemical makeup of the bogs and yielded many clues about their lives and what ended them. Fascinating reading, especially accompanied by wind and rain and lightning. How many mysteries could be written about the life and death of even one of these early people?
Incongruous as it sounds, while I read this gripping account of bogs and bodies, Frank Sinatra’s song, In the Wee, Small Hours of the Morning kept running through my head.
Now, this round of rain has come and gone. So far as I know, the hail missed us, but the stormy weather pattern is forecast to continue today and tonight.
azaleas in the snow, May 2013
Weather is fascinating and to a certain extent, unpredictable. Maybe I should say it’s uncontrollable. I remember four years, on May 3, I believe, we had snow in NWArkansas. Azaleas were blooming. Leaves hung on the trees but springtime disregarded what she was supposed to be. Some of us like weather that doesn’t change much, that’s mostly pleasant and mild, but I don’t. I’m afraid it would get boring.
Today, it is far from boring. More rain is likely to fall on ground that is already saturated. The Red Fern Festival in Tahlequah has been moved to the month of June. Rivers and creeks are flooding. There’s only one thing to do on a day like this–curl up with a good book or an article on the bogs of northern Europe and lose myself in another time and another place, accompanied by the sound of rain.
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