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Beside the lake, days that bring summer rain also bring the swallows. One overcast day, as I drove over the bridge at the small local marina, and headed for home along the shore road, I could see the sky between the trees was filled with swallows, diving and looping in the nothingness of the air. Every time I see these birds flying before a storm, I'm reminded of what my ex once told me, that when he was a boy in Saskatchewan in the 1940s, the old-timers on the rez used to say these swallows the real thunderbirds. They told him that many people pictured the eagle as the thunderbird, because the eagle was so large and fierce looking, but that it was really the tiny swallows who bore that name.
The rain poured down suddenly and sent every living thing hurrying for shelter. Then later, as the storm tapered off, the birds returned to dance again in the newly-washed
sky, and I dashed out between the drops and a snapped a few pictures of the birds as best I could.
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