This rain that soaks us through

It's June in the Pacific Northwet. The weather prognosticators tell us we can expect nothing warmer than 57° (13° C) today and, of course, it is pouring rain. This is quintessential June weather for us. The weather of every sodden June camping trip, every underwhelming June vegetable garden, every long distance stare into the ever-out-of-reach mirage-like notion of summer.

Most of my hiking/camping memories are cradled in the associations of rain. Rain slick creek-side rocks and boulders, fern-rich undergrowth tightly holding fists full of gathered rainwater with which to drench passing jeans, and an ever-dripping canvas of pine trees that didn't so much provide cover from the steady rain as slow it down to a fine steady mist, like flour passing through a giant sifter.


Gary Snyder conjurs some of this in his poem Endless Streams And Mountains, as he follows streams from a lake or river up into many mountains and past several stories. It isn't a rain poem, per se, but my associations of mountain streams invariably dress the mental imagery his poem conjures in wet and steady rain:

Clearing the mind and sliding in
to that created space,
a web of waters steaming over rocks,
air misty but not raining,
seeing this land from a boat on a lake
or a broad slow river,
coasting by.

Because of our rain we are lush, verdant, elaborately and explosively green, redundantly so. There is something comforting about this combination of really wet and really green to those of us born to it. I think we must be rocked to sleep so often by the sound of falling water spattering against foliage and the tangibly expressed humidity of rain that it seeps into our subconscious to become the definition of calm.

Then we grow older and have to commute in the stuff and it begins to form new associations. Ask the many high school age kids I pass on my way in this morning, miserably absorbing the rain without coats or umbrellas (uncool garb), sulkily ignoring each other in small loose groups as they wait for a bus they don't want to take.

Ask the freeway commuter whose already-tedious crawl becomes an instant creep while drivers fail to account for reduced visibility, wet pavement, and failing patience. Ask the parent at home with small children who will not-be-going-outside-in-this-downpour-thank-you-very-much! Ask the employee who works with his or her hands in the outdoors, who knows no amount of rain gear will keep them warm and dry throughout a full day of this rain.

Me, though, I have a short freeway-less commute. Four or five songs worth of travel time, half a dozen at most. I won't get my shot at being wet until I walk from my office to meetings on the main campus, a short half-mile through dripping greenery full of the smell of damp earth.

Driving in this morning, the wipers are swiping someplace within the signature time of the music, while Michele Legrand languidly slides from one rhythm to the next amid a thousand dazzling piano notes. The iPod favors jazz this morning, with Bob James up next followed by Ellington and his band. Just as I pull into the campus parking lot the iPod shifts to a little Rocco DeLuca, and the tempo changes.

Today's full playlist:
- Michel Legrand: Les Enfants Qui Pleurent
- Bob James Trio: Nightcrawler
- Duke Ellington: Arabesque Cookie
- Rocco DeLuca and the Burden: Bright Lights (Losing Control)


- Posted via Hermes.