Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Do you ever get the feeling that the universe is suddenly in alignment? It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it can bring either a smile, or perhaps a sudden fear of the unknown. The unknown comes in events that fall into place for no particular reason but that knit easily into the fabric of your reality.
Ok, that sounds a bit metaphysical, maybe even a bit unhinged, but I have an example from last week.
My wife had an appointment in Lander, and I had a couple of hours to kill. I visited the Pioneer Museum, which I often do, if you haven’t you should, it is a gem of an institution with a wealth of knowledge to share, but I digress.
After a little over an hour researching topics on the history of Fremont County I decided to take a walk along the Popo Agie. I drove to the City Park and trekked off toward the south along the well-maintained sidewalk that borders the Popo Agie to the west. I passed a couple of teenagers with fishing poles and asked them how they did.
“None today, they knew we were coming,” one of the youngsters quipped.
The sky began to darken. I heard the first rumble of thunder in the distance, but the clouds overhead were fluffy white, with big patches of blue.
I’ve been around the planet for a few decades, most of it here in the Wind River Country and I could feel the sudden drop in air pressure. That’s never a good thing when you’re on foot in open country. I walked on a few more minutes then felt the first raindrop. It was time to turn around.
I quickstepped it back towards the car as the clouds opened up. I was still 300 yards from the safe, dry cab of Sue’s Highlander. My left side got a little shower as I hustled back to the parking lot.
Safely inside, I turned on the heater to dry off the port side of my shorts and t-shirt. (nautical terms seemed to apply with the sudden cloudburst)
I listen to XM Radio often when driving outside the county, shifting between 60s (Channel 73) 70s (channel 7 go figure) and Yacht Rock Radio. (Channel 14)
This time it was Yacht Rock. The first song that came on was “Rainy Days and Mondays” by the Carpenters. It wasn’t Monday, but it was sure a rainy day I thought.
This wet classic was followed by Albert Hammond’s biggest hit, “It never rains in California.” Things were getting a little weird.
The final song of this little triple weather-related symphony, was Neil Sedaka singing, “Laughter in the rain.”
Yep, I was laughing along with the high-pitched lyrics delivered by Neal.
It was a bit of serendipity on the streets of the Apple City, as Lander was once known.
This wasn’t social media influenced or those strange emails that pop up after you think about buying something, but never say it out loud. It wasn’t clicking an ad for tires on Facebook and then watching your mailbox fill up with glossy, sale brochures for tires a few days later.
Those of you who won’t set up an Alexa in your home because you think they’re spying on you, well, you’re right. In the digital world someone is always listening. George Orwell wrote of two-way televisions with “Big Brother” watching you in your living room in his dark, paranoid vision of the future in the novel “1984” when he published it in 1949.
Old George wasn’t far off in a lot of things, but three consecutive rain-based songs on a rainy day in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains weren’t on his radar.
How often does this happen? Probably more than you think, but most of it is perception, not some divine intervention in an asphalt parking lot.
A couple of decades ago we bought a used Ford Explorer. It was adequate, not exceptional, but what was exceptional was the sudden increase in Ford Explorers every time I hit the highway. There were Explorers everywhere.
Had the Ford Motor Company suddenly built a huge surge of Explorers? No, but I had one and now I noticed others.
Explorers became ubiquitous and it was all just my perception in noticing them since I had one.
The same is true of anything you purchase. You never notice things until you own one then suddenly you see them all the time.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, how many times have you driven the same road literally thousands of times and suddenly you notice a house or a barn that wasn’t there the day before. They don’t build structures overnight. It was always there, you just never paid attention.
If you mention it to your wife, or a friend, you get a disdainful look and a comment like,” Where have you been?”
Once again, perception, or in this case, the lack of it.
Our five senses are strangely powerful things. They are miraculous and allow us to relate to the physical world around us. We don’t all sense things in the same way, but we have the same set of receptors as everyone else. Some are more acute than others. Some of us see and hear better than people next to us and some have enhanced palates, sense of smell or a lighter touch. It’s all part of the mystery of existence.
As Obi-Wan Kenobi said to young Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars, “Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them.”
That mistrust is how magicians, (and many politicians) can fool the public. With sleight of hand and distraction, they take our eyes off the target and perform “magical tricks” that amazes us. At least the magicians amaze us, the politicians, well, it’s a different emotion with those clowns, more a combination of disgust, loathing and exasperation, but once again, I digress.
Three songs that coincided with the arrival of a fast moving, powerful thunderstorm on a warm, sunny Tuesday afternoon in Western Wyoming. I didn’t expect it, laughed when it arrived, and was thankful for a bit of serendipity on an otherwise mundane day.
Laughter in the rain, someone should write a song about that.