I have to imagine Iowa right now. I’ve only spent two springs there, and the vision I immediately have is of campus flooded with trees and bushes coming into bloom and the grass shifting from brown to green. It seems nice.

Things are a little bit different for me in the Southern Hemisphere. After the initial few weeks of weather that I would label as crazy-hot, it’s been cooling off in the last month, and we’ve actually seen some rain. This is the Australian autumn.

It’s odd to think that the whole theory of seasons being at opposite points of the annual cycle on different parts of the planet can apply directly to me. And who says you don’t learn anything useful in ninth grade? Well I did, but I was wrong.

In February, I hopped on a plane in the winter and hopped off another plane three days later in the summer. Not only did someone shift the seasons on me, but someone else stole a day from my life. I think I might get both that day and the seasons back on the return trip.

Luckily, I had been warned and came prepared. My mother was careful to send her little boy off with sunscreen and a hat. She knew it was going to be sunny here. I just wonder if she knew about the hole in the ozone layer.

The first week, I got a sunburn. Back at home, I had been spending time outside for work, so my face was tanned — wind-burned, but tanned. The problem that I didn’t foresee had to do with the fact that I had been spending all of that time outdoors wearing a stocking cap. It was winter and it was cold.

So my forehead came off the plane white. It wasn’t ready for the transition, and it suffered. That’s been the worst consequence of the seasonal differences.

The sun is still strong, but the weather is continuing its shift here. Last week, there was a thunderstorm. I was inside, focused on writing, when I realized that the distant thunder had shifted and now came closer with striking force.

I made my way onto the covered porch and stood, amazed at the sudden change from the previous week’s weather. Rain came down in torrents and formed pools and streams in the sandy lawn.

There appeared to be two sections to the storm. Lightning cracked down from both regions of dark clouds as the two centers came together just overhead. I shifted from porch to porch, chasing the best view.

At one point, a jagged bolt of lightning came down just across the field. I was told, “That couldn’t be more than a half-kilometer away.” It didn’t fork but it was as wide as my thumb held out at arm’s length. Even as it faded into a trail of sparks, the thunder hit the building, rattling the glass in the windows.

Most of the university lights went out from power surges. I watched as the campus was swallowed up in the dark silhouette of the horizon. Only a few lights remained in our housing complex. Again, “Those lights are on a backup generator, last resort lights.”

Occasionally, multiple strikes would light up the whole sky. This was bright enough at one point to confuse the sensors on the emergency lights. Even these flickered out, their electronics certain that it wasn’t dark enough to stay on.

The night sky, usually filled with light pollution from the city, claimed itself back briefly from manmade light. And we college students stood, eyes up, attentive. The storm brought us out from our rooms, away from in front of our televisions.

This entertainment sparked conversation. People stood in lines, their faces toward the storm. Some held drinks, some smoked, but all watched the weather.

I thought about pagan religions, the focus on the Earth as a divine thing, celebrations centered on the summer and winter solstices. I thought about agricultural societies so closely tied to the change of the seasons and the weather, with festivals centered around the harvest. I thought about how much farmers can talk about the weather.

And I thought about me. I don’t farm. If it rains, I usually don’t think about how that’s going to affect a crop, I think about how to stay dry.

Well, I guess I’m tired of staying dry. I’m tired of staying under the cover on the porch. I want it to pour and I want to finally not have to run from it.