Westward Ho, Westward Go

There's been rain for the last two days. It's been much anticipated, at least by me. Yesterday the clouds rolled up from the west desert as I was driving home from work and I wanted to just take off into it past the tower of Mordor, past the Salt Flats, and way past Wendover with pouring rain the whole way. But I dutifully went home for dinner instead. Then today another smaller squall blew up in the late afternoon when work is typically deserted. A gentlemanly coworker came over to check on me since there wasn't a building nearby for me to hunker down in until it stopped blowing. I laughed and he looked at me funny when he realized I was enjoying myself and all the smells of rain in the desert: still dry dust, just a little rust, precious water, and beaten down sage that can't decide if it prefers being thrashed by the sun or the storm. I stood there for twenty minutes in the middle of an open field: not about to move for man or tornado. The ponies must have thought I was crazy; them all huddling with their backsides to the wind. What's the fun of that? For the most part I'm a homebody with not much interest in running away but I can't deny that my face is most often turned to the west. Like going off the deep end, I'd answer the call of the days of '47 or perhaps the largely hapless 49ers; maybe I'd even have beaten them there. Westward ho, westward go. It would have been even better in the rain.