Microcosm

I got caught in a rainstorm yesterday as I was exploring downtown Denver. It started out with the familiar wind and threatening clouds, and in practically no time, the slow, fat drops had turned into a downpour. I considered braving the elements for the 20-minute walk to my bike and the 30-minute bike ride home until a bolt of lightning seared itself onto my eyeballs and chased me under the nearest shelter, which happened to be the ampitheater at the Civic Center park.

Quite a crowd had already gathered between the Greek columns, trying to avoid the rain gusting in from either side, a real microcosm of the Denver that was not at work at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. I stood there, watching the storm and the random conglomeration of people it blew in, and getting rather wet until a white guy with a fauxhawk and a joint and dozens of tattoos informed me that I was welcome to stand in the shelter of one of the larger walls with his buddies, that they wouldn't bite. I laughed and politely declined, knowing that I couldn't even pretend to be part of their crowd, and made my way over to the shelter of the second wall, which seemed to be mainly populated by businessmen and tourists and homeless people, and where I felt I could be a bit less conspicuous.

Since the storm showed no signs of letting up, we got to talking (or rather yelling) to each other over the thunder. A cowboy-esque white guy, who seemingly had been sitting in the ampitheater since long before the rain started, told us all about the bizarre and unpredictable weather of Denver. Two guys from Italy, on their last day of a one-month tour of the American West, pointed at the flooded street and told me that they had come to see "the Denver River." There was a black businessman with a sopping dress shirt stuffed into his back pants pocket under his raincoat, and a homeless white man who looked a little perturbed that we had all interrupted his nap. A young Latino guy with his life and sleeping bag in a backpack came and asked if any of us had a cigarrette, and the homeless man sold him one for 11 cents. An older Latino man rode in on a bicycle with a stereo strapped to the back and played Bob Marley and the Barenaked Ladies while the rest of us tapped our feet to the music and chatted and watched and waited.

We watched people on the sidewalks sprinting from one building to another. We watched the druggies at the other wall run screaming into the fountain. We watched Colfax Avenue turn from a puddle to a stormy pond to a raging river. We all jumped at the same earsplitting thunderclaps and laughed sheepishly after looking up to make sure that the columns weren't crashing down around us.

All told, is was almost an hour before the rain died down enough for me to venture out to track down my bike and soggy helmet, but a fascinating hour it was, getting a glimpse into the lives of so many people I would've passed on the street with my eyes on the sidewalk on an ordinary day. Just one more reason to love thunderstorms.