Finally, rain, and everything feels right again, as if the thirst had been my own. In the morning I stand just outside the front door and watch the cows grazing on the hill, and then watch them as they notice the cats, who’ve emerged from the house in that tentative way of theirs, tails swishing, necks elongated, eyes wide, thinking this might finally be the morning danger lurks. Well. Who knows. Perhaps it could be.
I grind my coffee as I stand in the rain. It’s a hand crank grinder, and I count the revolutions. I always shoot for at least 200, though it only takes about 175 to make a cup. But I like to have a little in reserve. It’s a strange comfort, I know. It’s not raining hard, and I think that I could stand here for a long time, just watching the cows and the cats, pushing the grinder crank round and round and round ’til I’m wet through and the coffee’s all ground up. But at 200 I stop grinding and pad back into the house, my wet feet leaving prints on the tile floor of the mud room.
The cows graze some more and then lie down. The cats find no danger, and return to sleep on the couch, side-by-side, almost symmetrical. The rain goes on. It’s not even June, and summer feels so long.
Ben Hewitt 
Do you grind outside to keep from waking others? Dang that’s familiar! Ha! Beautifully written Ben!
you know the scene well, sounds like.
Ben….Grinding coffee outside. Gotta try that!
It ought to be about the peak of fiddlehead season, are you a picker? Fiddleheads are the one of the wild things that I miss about northern New England. Fiddleheads, wild onions, and fresh brook trout cooked together on a foil grill sheet over a stream side fire in a pool of butter..