Sibling Assignment #41: Enjoying the Rain

I gave this week's sibling assignment as the rain was pouring down here in Eugene last weekend. The assignment was simply this: What do you love or enjoy about the rain? InlandEmpireGirl's is here and Silver Valley Girl's is here.

During my senior year in high school, my girlfriend and I went to see Paul Newman's superb movie, "Sometimes a Great Notion". It was filmed on the North Fork of the Siuslaw River, near Florence, Oregon. The rain in the movie was almost like a character in the movie. It was always an obstacle the logging family had to overcome as they worked their family operation. Somehow, though, I found it beautiful, especially the way it came in it low gray clouds and gave the landscape a sheen of fertility, as if everything, ferns, rhododendrons, mushrooms, and the human determination to never give an inch grew strong and flourished because of the rain.

That night, watching the movie, I thought for the first time that I'd like to live in Oregon some day and be where the rain is plentiful.

In a way, I thought living in Oregon would akin to living in England. By the time I moved to Oregon in 1979, I'd been to England twice, and while I didn't enjoy getting soaking wet in English rain storms, I loved the look of it.

I find low lying gray clouds spilling sheets of rain beautiful. I find day after day of blue skies and sunshine unrelenting: the glare, the heat, the way the sun bleaches colors, whether on the car or a papers or a row of books that have sat too long near a window in the sun.

Gray clouds are easy on my eyes. And when they bring rain, I'm inspired by the power of the rain to replenish the ground, feed water supplies, and knock against whatever building I'm in with unique rhythms, whether gently tapping, pounding, or varying in intensity, depending on the wind.

Back in the late summer of 1985, when I did this sort of thing, I was at Eugene's Saturday Market one afternoon. As is usually the case in Eugene in summer, it hadn't rained since late May or June. Lawns were parched. The air was dusty, car exhaust was trapped in the Willamette Valley, and I had felt tension in the air. To me, the air needed to be relaxed, the tension needed to broken.

Almost out of nowhere that day, powerful gray clouds raced over Eugene. I was listening to the Ron Lloyd Band. Quickly rain fell. The dust on the concrete in front of the performance stage turned into little mud balls. The air thickened and the rain drops seemed to cut through the tense dry air we'd been breathing for almost three months.

I broke into my own version of a rain dance. It was a heavy, awkward dance, without form or elegance, but the dancing expressed my joy as I looked skyward and enjoyed the rain soaking my face and relished the rain beginning to soak my t-shirt. I lost all sense of self-consciousness and felt grateful and at one with rain, that finally Eugene's temperature was cooling and I could open my eyes to the sky without squinting or straining.

I enjoy how rain scratches the sky. I enjoy the drama of rain. I enjoy the promise of rain. I enjoy the coming of rain, how rain clouds bring the sky closer to me, giving me a sense of being nearer the heavens.

Over the last twenty-eight years since I moved to Eugene, we've had less rain. We've even had a drought. Of all the sights I don't enjoy in life, I'd have to list things getting dried out and parched would be at the top.

Therefore, when it does rain and the grass greens up again and tiny rain drops form on the maple leaves and gather on the needles of Douglas Fir trees, I'm very happy.

It's a sight I love and deeply enjoy.