...Seen from a distance, through the trees, it looked cheerful and spruce, with an unusually pure and even yellow sheen. Moving closer, I saw that it was a neglected field, one which had not been ploughed or sown for a long time, and which was now thickly overgrown with some kind of small bushy plant. A pleasant, somewhat bitter and flowery scent suddenly wafted across. “Yes, winter-cress,” I thought, remembering an atlas of flora I had once read, “a bit like a weed...”

A fresh wind swept across this living carpet, and the whole field rejoiced, washed with golden waves which rolled to the shady edge of the forest, the dark green and bright yellow making a striking contrast. The comparison “like a precious chalice edged with malachite” flashed through my head.
A kite soared high above in the sultry June sky. The heat foretold a storm. Above the horizon, in the west, an enormous black cloud was already forming, bulging with rain. Only directly overhead did the rough, rapidly shifting edges of the clouds dazzle with molten silver, radiating a blinding light. The wind rose and all the winter-cress blossoms swayed rapidly back and forth as if in some kind of exotic dance.

A multitude of larks was twittering away excitedly somewhere, hidden from view, and it seemed to be the flowers, the forest and this field in the middle of nowhere that were singing ahead of the storm. But then, out of the blue, little warm, grey bundles appeared and flittered above the golden winter-cress bushes. Some of the larks circled above the field, darting from flower to flower and filling the air with their incessant fussing. Others, flapping their wings again and again, flew upwards and hovered four or five metres above the ground singing life’s praises in as just as noisy a manner.

The storm clouds, bluish-pink in places as if on fire inside, were piling up in the sky and I saw that only a small gap of blue remained above the forest. From here, the rays of the sun came bursting forth onto the earth in a direct, broad waterfall, bathing all the sweet summer blossoms in a soft, warm light, while in the strained, charged air a blizzard of aspen fluff silently raged. Then all at once there was a deafening crash of thunder and the first heavy drops of rain came clattering down onto the gold of the winter-cress blossoms. The second the heavens opened it suddenly seemed that the whole of living nature breathed a great sigh of relief, and all the trees, plants, birds and animals were delighting in the glistening, eager rain woven from thick jets of water.

Soaked to the skin, alone in the middle of the darkened field, now suddenly silent as if constrained by the elements, I just as silently basked in the intoxicating pleasure a person feels when once a year, or at best twice, they have the chance to see and experience the wonderful turbulence of nature.