I Love the Rain
Originally published in Oregon Quarterly
Winter 2001
Sodden clouds, intermittent wipers and
home, sweet home
I love the rain.
I don’t mean I grudgingly appreciate its ecological necessity. I don’t mean I’ve learned to tolerate it. I don’t mean I wait it out, flipping through the calendar to see how many more pages until the sun might break through. I mean I love it.
I love everything about it. I love falling asleep under a down comforter in the dead of winter with the windows thrown open to the hiss of rain. I love waking up to the soft aqueous light that is a painter’s dream and listening to the rush of water in the culvert. I love the thrum of rain against the house on a dark afternoon with potato leek soup simmering on the stove. I love the fine mist on my face, the way my skin feels soft and pliant and new in the rain. I love thinking of words to describe the thick, sodden sky: pearl gray, dove gray, iron gray, pewter, ashen, silver, smoke. I love my big green, knee-high Wellies. I love the intermittent wipers on my car.
But it was not always so.
The first winter I spent in western Oregon was the second wettest winter in recorded history, or so I was told.