“Let it roll, baby, roll…” – The Doors

Ashland, Oregon. A beautiful little town with Shakespeare in its veins and a peculiar kind of madness in its trees. It was supposed to be a calm day, an aimless stroll through Lithia Park with my wife. Just a camera, a quiet garden, and whatever spirits haunt the mossy stone paths of this place. But the sky had other plans.

We wandered into the Japanese garden just as the heavens cracked open and began dumping sheets of water with the fury of a Norse god on a bad acid trip. Most people would’ve taken cover, huddled under the eaves of the tea house or made a break for the parking lot. But not us. No, no, this was our kind of weather. The kind of raw, unfiltered storm that reminds you you’re alive.

The koi didn’t care either.

There they were, two spectral fish gliding beneath the surface like ancient spirits caught between dimensions. One pale as bone, the other gold like a forgotten idol sunken deep in the murky waters of some forgotten jungle temple. Rain hammered the pond like machine-gun fire, concentric circles rippling outward, swallowing the fish and the reflections of the trees above them. It felt like watching the Earth exhale through the lens.

I stood over the water, soaked to the skin, trying to keep my hands steady, shutter clicking in a trance. My wife laughed behind me, drenched, boots squelching, umbrella long since abandoned in a fit of reckless joy. This wasn’t just rain. This was communion. With nature. With madness. With whatever strange frequency this park hums at when the tourists clear out and the storm rolls in.

Lithia Park, in that moment, became a place outside of time. No stage lights, no costumed tragedies just water, fish, trees, and two lunatics refusing to go home.

Soaked but free.

Blurry but focused.

Drenched in rain and shot full of wonder.

God help me, I think the fish were laughing.