Wondering at nature

I know it has been a long time since I posted, but it's been a busy few weeks. To recap, I spent a week (it was supposed to be 4 days, but it turned into a week) in the Bay Area hanging out with the sister and my brother in law, Unclwe Waynee, not to mention Connie and Ben and their daughter Maggie, and attended my college friend Lan's wedding. It was a busy few days.

But I'm back now, and back at work.

So this wonderment at nature today has a long history. About 10 years ago now (OMG!!), I worked at the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii. I often led hikes in the Waianae Mountains, which I really loved. One of the parts of the hike I truly loved was explaining to my hikers why it was that the Waianae Mountains have such amazing biodiversity. The Waianae Mountains are older than the Koolau range by about million years. So, one side of the Waianae Mountains used to be the Windward side, except as the Koolau Mountains came up, they blocked the rain from reaching the Waianae Mountains. Since the decline of rainfall happened over a long period of time, the species that lived in the Waianae Mountains had time to adapt. So now, the Waianae Mountains are in the rain shadow of the Koolaus - the clouds come in, hit the Koolaus and drop the majority of their rain, and then don't have time to pick up more moisture before they hit the Waianae Range.

Fast forward to today. After a week of a lot of heat and no tradewinds, it finally rained. And, since I work in Kapolei now, I actually got to WATCH the whole rain shadow tale that I have been talking to people about for years. And really, it made me marvel at nature. I mean, Mother Nature can be a stone bitch - witness everything going on in Samoa, the Phillipines, Indonesia, and India. She's unpredictable at best, and overwhelmingly destructive at her worst. And yet, there are these beautiful soft clouds, floating into the Waianae Mountains, not raining on the peaks, but leaving their soft mist behind, feeding the plants and animals that live there. So here was this soft, gentle, almost undescribably Mother Nature, doing her thing.

That's cool.

That was just my thought for today. Wanted to share.