In praise of the reign of rain (with apologies to victims of S.A.D. - Seasonal Affective Disorder)

Rain, rain, go away
Come again another day,
Little Johnny wants to play.

Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never show your face again.

“The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. He gets up the next day and it's raining. It also rains the day after that, and the day after that. He goes out to lunch and sees a young kid and asks out of despair, "Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?" The kid says, "How do I know? I'm only 6."

I am in a fairly small minority (of one?) on this. I have met several other NW natives who will reluctantly confess they like the rain too. After three weeks of rain, it feels cozy.

Rain imposes a certain rhythm on the world--the fantastic, incessant drumming and thrumming. Roostertails, mud puddles, downspouts funneling gallons of water a minute, the amazingly clean air, the glossy sheen varnishing the landscape, the muffled traffic and industrial sounds--I love everything about it. Rain reminds me of home, and family, of writing, listening to music, reading, and drawing. It feels like an old friend. They say in Seattle it's either a rain day or a drain day. At the moment we're trying to rain AND drain. The rain is winning. It's always there in the background, that wonderful, rhythmic drumming. It's a winter soundtrack.

You may have heard of the Alaskan tribes that have 400 words for snow? The Great Inuit Snow Hoax started in 1911 when anthropologist Franz Boaz mentioned that the Inuit—he called them "Eskimos," (the derogatory term for eaters of raw meat)—had four different words for snow. With each succeeding reference the number grew (or heh heh, snowballed), until it settled in at 400 words. The linguist Steve Pinker says they have no more words for snow that your average kid in Minnesota: "Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen." For rain, I only come up with a handful of synonyms in the northwest: showers, drizzles, sprinkles, flurries, precipitation, mist, precip, drencher, downpour.

It has rained every day in Seattle for the last three weeks. It is supposed to. And yet, transplants and locals alike complain about it every day. And we're not even close to the record (1953, when it rained 33 days straight).

The cumulative effect wears on people, and the land. My yard, which has already sprouted a small spring or two (e.g., the water table has nowhere to go but up). The yard is approaching 100% saturation. Walking across the lawn is like tiptoeing across a bowl of pudding, with the grass almost floating on top of a substrata of jiggling, barely solid mud. Even worse are the edges of the hills themselves. Seattle is largely a bunch of hills, separated by lakes, rivers, and canals. I live in the North Beach neighborhood of Ballard, on Crown Hill. Puget Sound is a ten minute walk down the hill. It is around the edges of these hills that things begin to liquify, slide, and tumble.

"We've reached a threshold for saturation."

Last week, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) issued an advisory that more rain could trigger slides in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. "The gradual buildup of rain makes it hard to predict slides," said USGS spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna, "because the soil is so soaked that it takes only a little rain to prompt a slide." "We've reached a threshold for saturation," she said.

I don't want the hills to slide into the sea, but I could easily enjoy another month or two of this. Break out your wacky sun lamps, bumbershoots, and parkas. Trudge in for your seasonal affective disorder treatments. In a few short months, it will dry up nicely. And I will miss the rain.
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