Wandering in the hills behind our house I was startled when a drop of rain landed beneath my eye. I wondered why I was crying. Desert walks can bring forth the most primal emotions. Then I realized it wasn’t me crying.

Unlike Sting, I’ve never smelled a desert rose.  But I have breathed in that magic scent the desert gives off when it absorbs those first drops from the heavens. Sometimes I wonder whether the scent is real or the imagined result of long spells without. I’ll be walking along in a vast desert landscape and all of a sudden my mind blossoms with hope and my nose expands to capture the delicious aroma. One happy breath and then it’s gone. Just like that. The promise of bounty disappears and it’s just mud in the trail, damp laundry on the line, and little dust circles on the porch.

I think the smell is caused by a chemical reaction between desert soil and water. Seems healthy desert dirt has a crust of cryptogamic soil and when it starts to rain little bacteria in that cryptogamic crust release their spores. They figure it’s a good time to plan for the future. Those spores have been waiting a long time for this moment. No wonder they smell so good.

My neighbor thinks it’s ozone. I guess a lot of people do. The way they figure, it has nothing to do with dirt. It’s all about rain. Those first drops come plummeting down for miles, gathering ions along the way for a bit of an “electrostatic” charge and voila, they make magic in the air that the ones to follow can’t even begin to duplicate.

In this post-modern world we could both be right. But the smell I’m dreaming of has everything to do with dirt and – yes, Sting - to the promise of gardens in the desert.