The Rain Dance

When I was younger I never understood the dance. 

The immaculate celebration was done when our tribe needed rain. It always made me smile to see my whole community together in a lively manner, all knowing this dance would bring good fortune. When those first wonderful drops of water blessed our skin we would all shout for joy, right before the sky would open up and douse us with water. It may seem a small thing to some, but rain was a blessing because it didn't come often, and left very quickly. It was essential for our community to collect and use the water whenever it fell. And it made our rivers flow and our grass green.

I remember my mother explaining why the water was so important. “Water gives us life, and gives the animals and plants life too. Water makes our rivers flow and our land green and rich. The rain dance keeps each harvest safe. For this reason we dance.” 
We rely on water like we rely on air. We must have it to live. 

There was a stream that my siblings and I used to play in. I would always love to look at the clear water after a rain storm and wave to myself in the reflection. It was calming to know so much water was so close to where we lived. It assured me that our plants and animals were safe, therefore, we were safe.

Of course this was when I was still a child. Now to look at my reflection, I would have to walk through the muck, where the stream line used to be, to reach the water. There I would try to see a young woman of 16  waving back at me. All I saw was a slight change in the brown water where I believed my hand to be. To think our stream used to be happily leaping past my waist seemed laughable, as now it was only a few feet deep, and an awful shade of dirty copper. As I climb back to the bank I collected  the daily plastic bags and trash that chug their way down the stream and get caught in the muck everyday.

 We had a nice collection.

I soon shook myself from those thoughts of childhood innocence and joined the rest of my community once more. We felt the cracked dry earth and dying harvest,  heard the slow copper river, and felt the hot baking sun in the cloudless sky. Ignoring my aching feet I held in my mind the feeling of cool droplets falling from the sky. We could not remember a longer draught period. No one understood why our ecosystem was dying and plastic pollution rising in our small community, far away from any large city. But this was the only resource we had to try and save our way of life, it was the only thing we could do. 

I now understood the rain dance.