WRITING NATURE: 
DISCOURSES OF ECOLOGY

The distinct cracking sound of raindrops shook me from my intense concentration. Texas weather is so random. I involuntarily marveled at how quickly the spotless blue had turned into an equally spotless gray, from such innocent peacefulness to such sinister violence; it was disconcerting, fantastic. Drops, materializing from an invisible nothingness, suddenly appeared.

The drops slowly covered the window, beginning as points, growing into dots, streaking into lines of beads. A pattern of water collected on the glass, exponentially growing until the meteorites of water ceaselessly bombarded the once barren world. Finitely countable, then infinitely impossible, the raindrops crowded onto their planar universe. I was an observer, and this was my world to watch.

The screech of skidding tires interrupted the seemingly ceaseless sound of splashes, and I jolted to a stop in the middle of an intersection after having run a stop sign. A cacophony of car horns and people screaming expletives greeted me, accompanying the curses of stupidity I quietly directed at myself. Too ashamed to make an apologetic gesture or even to look at the drivers, I tentatively pulled to the curb, looked for my hazards, and cut the engine before I made a more fatal mistake. Cursing my inept driving skills, I sat in the driver's seat, unable to drive lest I risk an accident, unable to leave without becoming drenched, immobilized by my fear and nature's torrent. My breath slowed as I wondered at my random luck.

The drops fell faster and larger, the symphony's individual notes no longer distinguishable, but becoming a hurried, frantic stream of chords, harmonies, voices. My beautiful universe had transformed from the simple to the complex in only a matter of minutes; so many lifeless bulbs of water, so many drops of water apparently waiting for something, a random accident, a catalyst, a spark, a breath of life.

A flash of lightning in the distanceŠ waitingŠ threeŠ fourŠ five secondsŠ then came the crash of thunder. I watched and waited, hoping to witness a lightning strike, at the same time realizing the dangerous consequences of such an event. The brunt of the storm was only a mile away and quickly moving closer, but still the wait seemed like an eternity, the anxious eternity for an awesome event that can bring either the fulfillment of dreams or disappointment, the cry of rejoicing or sadness, life or death, the eternity that brings an almost unbearable nervousness and unavoidable anticipation. I froze and waited.

As the lightning approached, the raindrops grew in size: some of the drops merged with others, forming oblong, deformed shapes. Some drops began inching towards others, as if attracted by some unseen force and, once merged, bound by some unseen bond that held the drop together, preventing it from shattering into a million smaller pieces. It was a personal and communal interaction on a microscopic level, an interaction between millions of individual molecules.

I know that chemically, water molecules attract other water molecules, bonding with each other through electrostatic and magnetic forces, a sort of invisible glue that turns water into those hemispheres that bead up on windows and hard surfaces. Macroscopically, we see water droplets fuse simply because it is a liquid, and that is the nature of liquids. Water has a natural affinity for itself, for its own kind, and the raindrops that I watched were no exception. Clusters of water droplets merged to form one large drop, while the isolated others were quickly ignored as I focused on the larger, clearer, more active collections of drops.

The crash of thunder came, no longer growling but sudden, instantaneous, loud. Involuntarily, I jumped, shaking the car, disrupting the stillness in the world with a sudden earthquake, the drops shaking with an equally involuntary shudder. Amazingly, as if the drops received some breath of life, many of them unanimously began moving towards the windowpane in a race to the bottom. Perhaps my shake gave the drops the energy needed to begin their downhill descent. Perhaps gravity was finally able to overcome those invisible forces holding the drops stationary on the window. Perhaps the drops had grown so large that they no longer could hold themselves to the glass. Perhaps nothing happened at all and it was just some random coincidence. The world took an evolutionary step away from static living to dynamic motion and forces.

It was a cluster of raindrops, and I was the objective scientist, silently recording the random movements between drops, as the forces of gravity inevitably caused the drops to fall down to the bottom of the window. Probability ensured that each frame in time, each moment that passed, would never repeat, so I watched, fascinated by the infinite number of possibilities that nature provides. If only I could record the multitudes of data required to recreate mathematically merely one scene on the window, then I could generate a model that emulated the captivating world before me. I couldn't, however, because it was simply a random occurrence in natureŠ

It was accelerated Darwinian evolution, and I was the naturalist, silently watching the creatures appear, grow, live, and die, silently hoping for the impossible event for all the drops to survive. They moved around randomly, larger drops consuming smaller drops as a hierarchy, a food chain, arose. And as soon as the hierarchy was established and provided a stable world, Nature destroyed it again, as the largest drops exploded from the impact of newly fallen rain: they were easy targets for the water missiles, providing an evolutionary check on the domination of the largest onesŠ

It was a society and I was the historian, silently noting the drops' social interactions,. Drops collected and became families, organizing themselves into nomadic clusters of houses, then villages, then towns, then cities. Some societies remained small and slowly disappeared, forever forgotten. Some societies grew until they consumed the others around them, wreaking havoc, leaving a conspicuous water trail, a history, in their violent wake. Some societies cooperated with their neighbors, consuming the growing enemies around them in a symbiotic relationshipŠ

It was a race and I was the spectator, silently hoping for the smaller drops to first overtake the bigger ones and eventually win the race to the bottom. They swerved, boldly colliding with other drops, all the while striving for that goal at the end, the bottom of the windowpane, the black rubber that absorbs those water drops lucky enough to make it. They raced unknowingly, or perhaps knowingly, to the bottom where they would eventually leave their world forever, destroyed. Collisions were inevitable in that crowded world, and yet the drops experienced no fear, unafraid of change. They were without those tentative actions that plague every human thoughtŠ

The symphony again slowed until I could hear the individual notes of the cadenza, and then, the rain stopped just as quickly and surprisingly as it had started. The collisions between drops slowed, the societies began to vanish, the race completed as the stragglers struggled to reach the bottom. I realized that my world would soon vanish and end just as quickly and surprisingly as it had begun, and I silently mourned for the inevitable extinction of the raindrops in the world. I ceased to be the observer and became just another member of the three dimensional world called Earth. Starting the engine and boldly pulling back into the road, I again resumed the travel that I had begun only a couple of hours earlier, swerving between cars, invigorated by some mysterious force.

The drops became still, then grew smaller, then eventually dried on the window. As they evaporated and perished, they left white stains on the glass, leaving only a trail of fossils for me to remember the once lively world that surrounded me. The calcite remains became the drops' history, an unmoving account of a time and a place when raindrops created societies and raced and fought in a bid for survival. I drove away, wistfully hoping for the next storm when once again I could witness the universe with omnipotence. The chaotic world faded away, and my thoughts returned to the world of people, car horns, and worries.