Every autumn for several years, I have said to myself, “I need to get a picture of the leaves on the ground along the creek.” I chose the middle of a downpour this afternoon to go outside and finally do so.
There is always sufficient water at the source to keep our babbling brook active. Even during the lengthy dry spell we had this summer, we could count on it burbling past the window to ease us into sleep each night. Today it has about as much volume as we see it get, and although it is not on par with Snoqualmie Falls, it has the attraction of running virtually under foot.
Do you see the size of the raindrops in that photo?
It has been raining cats and dogs in western Washington the last couple of days, and the wind has blown up pretty well
— there was a gust of 114 MPH recorded yesterday at Naselle Ridge,
and a tractor/trailer rig was blown on its side crossing the Columbia River just south of there at Astoria.
Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery wintered within a stone’s throw in 1805–1806, and the members’ diaries for those months
complain about the weather most every day; typical is Clark’s entry of November 15, 1805:
The rainey weather Continued without a longer intermition than 2 hours at a time from the 5th in the morng. untill the 16th is eleven days rain, and the most disagreeable time I have experienced. Confined on a tempiest Coast wet, where I can neither get out to hunt, return to a better Situation, or proceed on.¹
I love the rain. I am sure in no small measure it’s because I was raised here, and people have lamented that I do not
use the sense God gave me to move somewhere dry, but it’s home. (PEMCO Insurance has run an ad for the last couple of years called
Blue Tarp Camper.
They could very well have rummaged through our family’s Super 8 film from when I was a kid and come
up with the shots in that commercial, right down to the wet dog.) I cannot find a reliable source to cite, but I have read that estimates
are there is more biomass per acre in the Hoh River valley than anywhere else on Earth. I can testify, though. I’ve been
there. I’ve seen it. I’ve camped in its midst beneath a blue tarp. It’s the rain. The clouds soaking the Hoh as I
write this are contiguous with those soaking our back yard. It’s our rain. As Tim Egan put it, it’s The Good Rain.
Once a year, the trees outside our kitchen window give up their leaves to form sopping, composting wreaths around a stream fed by rain that sustains the most massive forest on the planet. And I have the good fortune (and good sense) to be here to bear witness.