Early Rain Quotes

“What is it?" I asked.
"Rain," she said.
"It's too early for rain."
"That's what you think. Open the door. You'll see."
I turned off the air conditioner so that we could hear better, slid open the glass door -- and the soft thunder of rain falling onto sand curtained us in. Deaf, we would still have known it was raining: smell would have told us; the smell of dry earth watered, of dehydrated vegetation reconstituted, the smell of resurrection. The first rain in a dry land! It smells better than lilies in July, or the ocean, or the wind in sun-warmed pines, or the irrigated patch of alfalfa you reach after a long haul through dry hills. It is hard to smell that sweetness and believe in death.”
― Jessamyn West, A Matter of Time