Rainy days

It’s likely to rain tomorrow and I can’t wait!

Now, I know this will not going to come as a surprise to those of you who think of Seattle as the Rain Capital that rain approacheth. Of course, you’d be wrong, since Seattle and its environs ranks somewhere between 30^th and 40^th in annual rainfall among major American cities (the range is due to disagreements as to what constitutes a major American city). So while it does tend to start getting moist long about this time of year, it’s not because we live in place for which the best possible adaptation is  webbed feet. It’s because it’s Fall.

It will come as a surprise to some of you that I look forward to the advent of the rainy season. Some of you think of rain as a bad thing. After all, from kindergarten on we have been proselytized by a string of well meaning but misguided teachers to make the “rain, rain go away!”

Rain is a good thing. It makes our little corner of the world quite green, thank you very much! It feeds the rivers which feed the lakes upon which I love to paddle. It freshens, quenches, cools and conditions. Okay, it does make dogs smell bad but they’re pretty good at that on sunny days, so I don’t count it as a strike against precipitation.

There is nothing better than the smell and the quality of light after a nice gully washer. Of course, being caught out in said gully washer isn’t necessarily a peak experience. I recall one evening when I was about twelve and had stayed late at school and as I began my mile-or-so walk home the heavens opened, as they say. By the time I passed the blueberry farm, there was not part of me that wasn’t soaked through. It took me an hour to get warm after that little hike.

And I loved it. I recall it as one of my most enjoyable experiences. Don’t know why. I just really like rain.

I also like that until the back yard dries out again, Mary won’t make me lay the brick for the grill pad.

So there’s that.