I always dread the first snowfall of the season. It tells me that winter is almost upon us. I’m usually depressed. My awareness is scattered. My body feels awkward too. Everywhere I go, people say they feel the same. We are all profoundly affected by the weather. We all retreat into ourselves when it starts being cold and would probably hibernate if we remembered how.
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Our present culture tends to see everything as separate and distinct. It’s difficult for most of us to see our connection with the weather. There is the weather, and there is us. Separate. Other cultures, however, have understood this profound connection. They have imbued the phenomena of weather with consciousness and personality. The clouds, the thunder, the winds, and the storms were all seen as alive with intelligence and purpose.

Giving consciousness and purpose to weather phenomena is one way of doing it. However, the point isn’t whether they have consciousness or not, it is rather that the weather affects our consciousness and is affected by our consciousness in turn.

Most of the time that I’ve done medicine, especially out of doors, if it has been at all cloudy when I have begun, the skies themselves have become clear as I have become clear. However, if the land has needed rain and I have felt the healing moisture within, it has rained.

I remember once when a group of us from UCLA drove into the nearby mountains to camp for a few days. On the way, my car overheated with a stuck valve, and I almost didn’t make it.

At our camp, it was very hot and dusty, so we all decided to do a rain dance. We got out our drums and rattles and other makeshift noisemakers and began to dance around in a circle. At first there were only a few little white clouds in the sky, but within a very short while, it was raining hard. And when we left the next morning, my car ran perfectly all the way home – and for a long while after that too.