Bucket Drumming

Bucket drumming is a whole bunch of fun! Here are a couple of links so you can see Stormi's Giant Ass Drum Corps:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=39004557
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&vanity=giantassdrumcorp

And now, for the story:

This morning is cloudy, and our dogs are restless. No matter where I put my dog Rudy, she yips every minute or so, looking up and waiting for something I'm not smart enough to figure out.

Some of the music campers have lunch on the patio, as usual, and as we eat and chat, the thunder begins to creep up. A low growl to the south, faint as a baby's snore. Darkening clouds bloat into stony pillars, and, like an old man recently moved from wheelchair to bed, the thunder grumbles on and on.

After lunch, bucket drumming is scheduled. Using 5-gallon plastic buckets we strap on, and drum sticks with rubber bands wrapped around the ends as beaters, we boom, boom, boom on the bucket head, tap, tap on the edge, whap whap, whap on the sides, boom boom boom, tap tap, whap whap whap, in unison. And then it gets more complicated, as the group splits up and drums different patterns, that blend and weave in and out of the rhythm, all to Stoni's calls and her big grin.

Our drumming seems to draw the thunder. We're standing under a copse of lodgepole pines, the air pressure deepening like a late-night conversation. The lake becomes freckled with widely-spread drops of rain.

Boom boom, and we echo boom boom boom. A cool breeze asks if we're ready for what is coming, and the lightning approaches like a brand new sewing machine needle, there and there, and now here enough that I wonder if we're standing under the tallest trees.

A downpour of rain and hail, lightning and thunder puddles all around us, and pine needles cornrow across the lawn and down to the lake. The lake looks like a stubby beard just growing out, and the thunder rolls ponderous and liquid as the rain.

Later, at bedtime, storms come through again. It bounces off the hills all around, teasing, daring us to track it. The booming is nearly constant, punctuated by the sharp, tinny sound of individual raindrops, rumble, tink tink, rumble, tink tink tink, all around, like we're in the middle of a big pot, the mellow sound of a wooden spoon striking the sides, little bubbles breaking all around.

This goes on so long that at last Rudy sleeps, head up, ears still pointed, but sleeping still, unhearing, her eyes half open.

It reminds me of a time, 11 years old, camping with my parents and their friends on the Missouri River, in my dad's 19' Bell Buoy cabin cruiser. Our day had been spent seining for minnows and fishing, the women sunbathing and chatting, small children splashing and running in the hot sand and the cool silty-green water.

Suddenly, or so it seemed to me, it was nearly dark and we were boating downstream, spot light shining ahead, poking for submerged logs in that wild and untamed river that changed with every big rain and with every spring flood.

I could sense my parents' anxiety, see the spotlight reflecting off the pilings stacked vertically like the walls of army forts, keeping the river from its meandering ways. I could see the whirlpools and eddies, dimpling the greasy water ahead. The night was pitch, needled with our spotlight, seven miles to go.

I laid down on the floor of the boat, on the chilly, damp fiberglass, aft of the cabin. The 70 HP Merc outboard's vibrations thrummed through my body. As our boat hit a submerged log, and the log rumbled the length of the boat with a sound like boxcars crashing, the motor flipped right out of the water, propeller keening away into the air, and I fell soundly asleep.