It's Raining

It's raining where I live. I mean a steady rain, a soaker. Prior to the present rain, this morning, the rain had been sporadic and light, meaning enough moisture on the plants you can notice, see, measure, the wetness, but underneath the fir needles on the ground I could see dry dirt. Oh, and prior to this morning the last measurable rain was back in March, I believe.

I have instituted two daily walks with Lizzie down to the Little North Fork river, which borders my property. I listen to the river. I turn and look up the river. I anticipate what will come. I do not know what will come. I live in anticipation of what will come. I rejoice knowing the future will flow to me at its own rate or, perhaps, at a rate I can handle. Then I look down river. I see my past flowing away from me. I can say goodbye and rejoice knowing I lived in that past.

Yesterday the river was quite low. I must admit I have no strong observational reference point, because I have only lived here just over 2 years. I know my neighbors across the river have lived here over 40 years.

I will remember, in the future to come, how much of the hard rock(granite?) river bed was exposed during the drought of 2015.

This evening Lizzie and I took our second stroll of the day down to the river. As I left the house it had just started to rain and I could tell it wasn't going to let up(a native's intuition?). I grabbed a rain coat from the truck and slipped it on. By the time I reached the second, or middle, tier of my property the rain was coming down hard enough I zipped up the rain jacket and pulled the hood more snugly over my head. I continued on down to the river.

I looked up stream. I saw the river bed had a layer of water over what had been exposed this morning. Now there was a layer of debris on a long upstream pool. The river was flowing so slowly it seemed the debris wasn't moving at all, as if it were a lake not a stream. The debris was a result of high wind conditions.

The rain intensified and I felt I needed to get inside as I had on sweatpants. I could feel those sweatpants soaking up the rain. As I was leaving I remembered I hadn't stopped to listen to the river talk. I turned back toward the river and listened for only a moment. I realized I could not hear the river talk. The rain was drowning the ripples out.

I looked down stream and saw the bigger rocks and knew when the fall rains come the river will talk there.

I turned and walked quickly up the two inclines I must traverse to get back to my house. The rain was really coming down, the soaking rain I mentioned previously.

And then I remembered doing something similar with Marcia her first year at seminary. California had been suffering with a long drought when we arrived. It seems to me we arrived in August, so it was another two plus months before the first soaker rain came.

I came home from work. Marcia had finished her classes. I cannot recall what the boys were doing, but they were not a factor in our evening's plan. We decided to go out to eat. We walked from our seminary apartment down to Shattuck Avenue where there was quite a choice. We chose Thai. It may have been my first Thai meal. I've led a sheltered life.

When we left the restaurant it started to rain. It was a soaker rain. And we didn't care. We had brought rain coats, a hat for me, Marcia had an umbrella, so we were prepared. We walked back up the hill toward our apartment in the rain.

We came up to another apartment building the seminary owned and wondered whether our friends from Reno, Nevada were home and receiving visitors. We knocked and the husband opened the door, took one look at us, and immediately invited us in. "You are soaked. Why are you out in this downpour?" We both smiled. "It's just rain," we said.

Once again I am out in a soaker rain at what might be the end of a drought for Oregon. The rains will come and the Oregon country side will be green again. I say 'green again' because the drought has caused many deciduous trees to turn color and drop their leaves. Most lawns and meadows are brown. It has been more of a California fall and chronologically fall ain't here yet.

I recall having negative thoughts about rain growing up. You couldn't go outside and play. Rain probably has a more negative impact on the young than the old, but for different reasons. As an adult one usually has to go out in the rain as opposed to not being able to go out. Now I appreciate and look forward to the rain.

Lizzie in the mean time had taken off as fast as she could go to my neighbor's house. My neighbor is Lizzie's bestie and they hadn't seen each other for over a week as the bestie had been in Alaska. I wasn't aware she had returned home until I followed Lizzie's sprint and saw her car. I left Lizzie to say hello and elected to go home and put on dry sweats. Lizzie's bestie gets to dry off a soaked dog.