Search Results for “counting raindrops”

Counting raindrops at Biosphere 2

My days are full, from sunrise to well after sunset. My creation of the world’s highest fidelity Mars habitat analog compels me likely nothing else since the days of Yellow Dog Linux. I am driven 80+ hours each week, save a beer, pizza, and movie each Friday night with my partner Colleen.

Today, at Biosphere 2, the rain began at noon, a light sprinkle, nothing more. Now, five hours later it beats against the window as though it could break in if it truly desired. At my computer I am catching up on email, financials, and on-online orders while two of my team members install electrical circuits in the greenhouse of SAM, our Mars habitat analog here at Biosphere 2.

I pause every few minutes to look outside and sip my hot ginger tea. While fierce and strong, the sound of rain soothes me as I have not felt for a long time. If the rain would turn to snow, the sound of flakes, while more subtle, would touch me even deeper.

By Kai Staats|2023-03-20T11:39:57-04:00February 21st, 2023|At Home in the Southwest|Comments Off

Counting raindrops in Cascabel

Rain in the desert is a welcomed affair. A light sprinkle, a massive downpour, or a steady flow for hours. It’s the contrast, the incredible change in temperature, aroma, and “electricity” that makes one want to just stand and watch it come down for hours.

This morning I awoke a little past 5 am to the rumble of the sky above me and the shaking of the construct below, an elevated porch on which I sleep in a tent every night. Pent up, potential electrical charge found repeated orgasmic release in the clouds and surely, to the ground as well, out there, beyond the mesquite that surrounds me.

I was thrilled by the abrupt awakening, the storm a distressed lover who yet unsatisfied by dreams moves into the day with the embrace of thunder. While I lay there for fifteen or twenty minutes, the cool splash of droplets that found their way through the window mesh, the storm was clearly, directly overhead. Sleeping outside, four meters above the ground on a metal deck connected to a metal house, I figure it was the safest place for me to be, or really quite stupid. At that moment my physics brain was unable to discern, so I took the safe bet, gathered my things and hurried inside.

This storm is the first I have experienced here, since purchasing this house and property six months ago. I am reminded of the splendor of the Buffalo Peak Ranch in Colorado where the boundary between the outside and inside of the cabin is thin, just enough to keep the water out, but everything else is welcome in.

Doors wide open on either side of my studio space, a pesky, bold grey striped squirrel who has marauded my garage, compost, tools, and engine compartment of my new car decided to venture in. He stopped about three meters to the right of where I sat, looked to his right, then left, spotted me and darted back out the door. I jumped up and pursued him but he disappeared without a trace. He hasn’t been back … yet.

Time to refill my tea and settle into the tasks at hand. Already, it is half past 1 now, the day gladly spent listening to the rain over Cascabel.

By Kai Staats|2019-10-08T21:15:19-04:00September 24th, 2019|At Home in the Southwest|Comments Off

Counting raindrops in Meru

The Meru Simba Lodge dining area is unusually occupied at 22:40 this evening. Two men to my back and side speak quietly in Swahili. One told me he cannot go home at this time, as the elephants are on the road, having crossed out of the Arusha National Park earlier in the evening. We both heard what sounded like a half dozen gun shots, he further explained these were locals, not shooting at them, but scaring them back into the park. No one walks at night unless they must for the elephants are far more a threat than the cheetah, here, at the base of 4000 meter Mt. Meru.

This is my twelfth day in Tanzania, each rich, full, and fully engaged as I work with my colleagues, ambassadors to astronomy for this Telescopes to Tanzania and Astronomers Without Borders project. But tonight it is raining for the first time since my arrival. Light at first, the tempo and volume has increased and the wonderful aroma of cleanly washed atmosphere.

The temperature has dropped, a light breeze brings a subtle chill, the aroma of wet forest and the banter of the drops on the thatched roof remind me of the need to breathe it all in.

By Kai Staats|2019-08-02T16:24:43-04:00August 2nd, 2019|2019, Out of Africa|Comments Off

Counting raindrops in Oracle

Rain in the desert is unlike rain in Pacific Northwest, the midlands or Florida. In Seattle it is anticipated so much so that it has become part of the folklore, the first thing someone mentions when you state you are visiting or live there. In Florida, the rains increasingly come not as a light afternoon shower, but as torrential downpours, the kind of storm that forces people to evacuate their homes.

In the desert, rain is a welcomed friend, the one that visits just a few times each year. Children rush out to meet her, the adults smile at the sound of her approach. The burden of the sun is temporarily pushed aside by cloud cover of her cloak.

When rain comes to the desert, it brings with it the generation of aromas that otherwise require the crushing of arid leaves between finger tips or stirring of debris underfoot. Sage, mesquite, and flowering ground cover entice human memories, stimulating something deeper than olfactory alone.

The emotions invoked are not unlike the embrace of a friend or caress of a lover, brought to life in the rapid transition from brown to green, dry to soaked. Yet they are fleeting, as quick to arrive as they are to depart. The aroma of the desert rain is diminished. We anticipate, but never expect.

By Kai Staats|2019-02-18T01:28:56-04:00February 14th, 2019|At Home in the Southwest|Comments Off

Counting raindrops in Pasadena

Following years of drought, months of fires, and weeks of hope for rain, it finally came.

The fine black dust that covers the rooftops, the hand rails, the pool decking, and the leaves of the trees is finally washed clean. Every drop is welcomed, every cloud asked to linger unrestrained. In the high density living of this LA suburb, the rain has the same affect as it did in Tokyo ten years ago—the air cools, the aromas are enhanced, and the blankets are brought out from storage to provide warmth and comfort against the welcomed chill.

By Kai Staats|2019-08-02T16:27:33-04:00January 9th, 2018|From the Road|Comments Off

Counting raindrops in Germany

Again I have promised myself to find sleep before 1 am. Again, I am awake, working to catch-up with my life after the intense experience of the International Space University, Space Studies Program in Cork, Ireland.

A moth flutters between the lamp shade and bulb. A distant jet passes overhead, by the sound neither arriving to nor departing from Frankfurt International Airport which is just a few kilometres distance from where I sit. This enclosed space provides the deeply nourishing aroma of untreated pine, floor, walls, and ceiling. An enclosed half gazebo is my resting spot each night, in the back yard of a family friend in Rüsselsheim, Germany.

Small spaces. Safe spaces. A room just big enough for a bed and table lamp, both resting on the floor; an area rug and place to place wet shoes. This is what feels right to me. Not the opposite of wrong, but right as in comfortable, natural, and satisfying.

We are so much driven to embrace thick walls, insulated ceilings, and windows that reflect heat and block sound that we forget what it means to fall to sleep to the wondrous sound of raindrops, falling, one by one.

By Kai Staats|2019-08-02T16:30:10-04:00August 30th, 2017|From the Road, The Written|Comments Off

Counting raindrops in Ireland

From the passenger seat of this rented Opal, I watch seagulls contend for strings of seaweed and scraps of bait tossed overboard from a passing fishing vessel, the only one to enter Reen Harbour this Sunday morning.

Two dozen small ships are anchored here, in the neck of this natural safe haven. Some old, rusty buckets that have seen many storms; some new, clearly more for sport and weekend fun than generating income.

Michael, the principal guide of yesterday’s kayaking tour directed my attention to an otherwise elusive, black hulled, single mast sailing boat which is, he shared, simply gorgeous on the inside. The owner purchased the hull in another country and had it towed here, to Castletownshend, Ireland for an overhaul. A master craftsman, he has meticulously refurbished the interior to a degree that was best expressed by Michael as a whistle rather than words.

It is the owner’s intend to sail to Iceland, but recent poor weather has kept him here for a few weeks more. I was shocked to learn of this intent, for the boat appears quite small, with a square stern and equally vertical bow, it does now appear to the layman’s eyes the kind of ship one would take into then open, northern seas.

I slept here last night, in this rental car, after my second guided paddle for the day. Michael, his partner Caroline, and Patrick are passionate about their line of work, as they take customers onto the water two times a day, five, six, sometimes seven days a week. They carefully interweave the experience of exploring this harbour by kayak with history, biology, and a lesson in mindfulness training.

Michael suggests that we let go of all that we brought with us. In a tag-team fashion, Michael continues, “find your child’s imagination again,” for in that place lie the ghosts of history come alive in the silhouettes on-shore and the unknown treasures in the depths below.

We paddled through pockets of brilliant bioluminescence, pockets of phytoplankton that have by day stored the sun’s energy in order to release it again at night. Caroline shared that some 90 percent of the ocean’s lifeforms are able to produce visible light. The reasons for this communication are not yet fully understood.

The wake of a kayak, the twist of a paddle, even the flick of fingertips across the surface of the water invokes a magical light show. Michael snatched a net of seaweed and demonstrated how one could invoke a cacophony of illumination, hundreds of points of light popping on and off again.

We returned to shore just after midnight, but I was reluctant to exit my boat. I could have remained adrift ’till sunrise, content to watch, to listen, to take innumerable more deep breaths. The chilled, salty air of the coastal Irish night drew me into the comfort of my borrowed comforter which this morning continued to hold me tight.

The windscreen is littered with raindrops from the most recent ladened clouds. I have rolled the side windows up and down a few times already in concert with the passing clouds. The sun has shone but for a few minutes, only to retreat again to its own safe haven, a harbour for a celestial body relatively unknown in this land.

By Kai Staats|2019-08-02T16:30:55-04:00July 30th, 2017|From the Road|Comments Off

Counting raindrops in Nairobi

At midnight, a twelve hours call for the Holy Spirit to rain down on those gathered in a tin-roofed church climaxed in a cacophony of singing, shouting, and crying–a collective, spiritual orgasm.

When those who believe the creator of the universe can hear their plea only with amplified voice finally succumb to sleep, this can be a quiet, peaceful place.

The rain did come, throughout the night and into the early morning. The rising sun warmed a cloud ladened landscape. The subtle bass rhythm of music rose from a distant flat. The voice of an infant oscillated from a low complaint to a full cry of discomfort in a world yet new. Two stories below our shared flat, the muddy streets were transformed into temporary streams which carry plastic bags, wrappers, and packaging through a muddy, gravitational descent.

I find my time in the cities perplexing.

While we move to a greater understanding of how our universe did unfold, deeper insight to what makes us whole, I see a world of increasing disconnection for who we are. A lack of understanding of the complex system of which we are a part. Fear of the environment outside of that which we have built.

Repeat attempts at replacing what makes us human with a technological revolution. Just one more upgrade, just one more download, and finally, we will have arrived to that place where our inherent biological tendency toward the path of least resistance is satisfied, our lives made more easy.

Yet, that place is never found.

Our youth know not what it means to be alone.

By Kai Staats|2019-08-02T16:29:13-04:00November 13th, 2015|2015, Out of Africa|Comments Off

Counting raindrops in Jerusalem

I just awoke from a much needed mid-morning to mid-afternoon sleep. Not a nap, for I seldom enjoy those, but a true sleep. Perhaps the best since I have arrived to East Jerusalem. Last night I was editing ’till 2AM and then walked to the office in the Old City to upload a film. At 4AM I caught a taxi with two volunteers for EAPPI in order to shadow them at the Kalandia checkpoint at the boundary of the West Bank.

Back to my apartment at 8:30, ate breakfast, and despite my best efforts, found sleep pulling at me.

What called me from my slumber was the wonderful wind driven rain pounding on my windows. I realized then that for me, changes in the seasons, both in temperature and length of day are an important part of my feeling settled in this world. I look back to March of 2008 and a blog entry Counting raindrops in Tokyo. I was so completely content to just sit in my hotel room, the window open to the street far below, and allow the mist to fill the room.

Living here has for me been a challenge, a true test of my ability to find internal peace amidst a nearly continuous onslaught of horns, sirens, music, fireworks (from Palestinian weddings) and road noise. It has been a study in my minimal need for exercise and at the same time, a study in sound and how it affects me. My every-other-weekend ventures to the Dead Sea, highlands of the North past the Sea of Galilee, and hiking in the West Bank with my friend Lukas have been absolutely necessary to maintain any semblance of balance.

I am envious of people who are grounded and content in the city. But I would never want to feel so comfortable here that weekend adventures on the trails were no longer needed.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:39-04:00December 4th, 2012|Out of Palestine|0 Comments

Counting raindrops in Tokyo

Of raindrops and subway stops
It has been a most beautiful, cool, rainy day here in Tokyo. I sit now at a small corner desk braced above and to the side of a lime green, half-moon dresser which houses a small fridge and shelves. The wall behind me is glass, top to bottom, left to right, separating the bathroom from the bedroom and my desk. Track lighting overhead, an LCD panel mounted to the wall, and my favorite–two windows that open fully in order that I may invite the rain to occasionally land on my keyboard. A perfect use of a small space. Both compact and comfortable.

In my home-away-from-home hotel room, I look across to an apartment complex where a man in his 70s uses the black iron fence on the fourth floor landing to assist with his morning stretches, a woman of similar age waters her plants, and an old temple retains the only grass for as far as my eyes can see, its closest perimeter a grave yard with polished granite tombstones.

Tokyo is a surprisingly quiet mega-tropolis. Few horns. No yelling. Not a lot of traffic noise for public transit is far, far more common than driving a personal car. Just a low level hum and tonight, the cool rain captures the remnant pollution of the day, each drop a transport from sky to ground. The air is crisp, my windows open, the heavy comforter inviting me to bed once I complete my work for Terra Soft. But the work is never complete and I will likely push into the early AM to be online realtime with my staff in Colorado, California, and Canada.

Of pastries and people
I stood in the Shinagawa station, leaning against the glass store-front of a French bakery (where I purchased yet another bag of wonderful breads and pastries; an interesting, unexpected complement to the incredible Japanese cuisine) and watched the nearly unified mass of people in motion. It was surreal. I have never in my life seen that many people move through a space that quickly without incident. I had to remind myself this was not a video game nor scene from the Matrix where men in black suits replicated. I attempted to apply a story to each one, their parents, education, jobs, their own children. So many humans on this planet. Each has a unique story, yet the vast majority go untold.

They come in waves which swell and retreat, from shoulder to shoulder to just enough negative space to navigate if you hurry and do not falter. Sometimes I stop in the middle of the crowd and look up at a sign, down at my subway map, and again at the sign, the tell-tail behavior of a tourist, I know. Yet I am impressed by how I am seldom bumped, the people of this place experts at moving through life without need for substantial personal space.

I stood at the top of the stairs to the JR line and could not fathom entering the mass for fear of falling and being trampled. I waited and watched, as one would wait for a break in a storm before dashing across the school yard to the bus stop. Even when I did brave the passage, the density on the train was such that it was impossible to fall for one was held upright against the mass of black suit coats, black pants, and black shoes while someone, somewhere at the other end of the car, received the immense pressure of acceleration working on these otherwise immobile bodies.

Of visas and vistas
I have truly enjoyed my time here, breaking down my childhood stereotypes built upon too many late nights watching Godzilla, Inframan, and b martial arts flicks. Perhaps in the work of Akira Kirosawa’s “Dreams” I find the most relevance. Even this second time, Tokyo astounds me in so many ways, like no other city I have experienced. I both cherish its nearly sterile cleanliness and organization, and yet at the same time long for the chaos of the streets of Nairobi or the raw, overpowering unfamiliarity of Bangkok.

I was to have flown to India a few days ago, but for lack of visa am now awaiting a phone call from the embassy. I will soon experience something altogether different as my employee Karthik and I race through nearly three dozen meetings in just three weeks in four of India’s largest cities.

Last week I enjoyed a day at the hot springs with a co-worker from Japan and Sunday bouldering on the limestone which lines the river off the Ome line Mitake station. I have arranged for more business meetings, and attended the ballet in the new TBS/Sacas arts and entertainment complex. Tomorrow I will visit the B-Pump rock gym for the second time. This weekend, if I have not yet received a call from the Indian embassy, I will return to Mount Mitake for hiking, climbing, and walking by the turquoise blue river whose relentless carving of the limestone gives locals opportunity to boat, fish, and enjoy something other than concrete beneath their feet.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:46-04:00March 19th, 2008|Out of Asia|1 Comment

Need a new search?