rain
i knew enough to ride my bike to work as much as possible last week..to take my students outside to read...to host a party by the firepit...for, today: it rained. and i was grateful! i envisioned rivers being cleaned of their sledge and the greening of forest fire patches. so it's fitting to post a segment of local author brian doyle's "pitter and drench". he was asked by a prospective student's mother if it rained here in oregon. his response, in part:
"does it rain here? look about you, woman. gaze long and lovingly on the lushness of the grass, and the vault of the trees, and the tangled insistence of the bushes, and the startling prevalence of moss, and the little swale near the chapel that is always moist no matter how hot and dry the weather, and tell me if you think that perhaps yes, a drop doth fall here and there, and then another, and then a thousand and million and uncountable zillions from november right through june, so that summer here is accounted from july to october, after which the rains begin and neither do they cease, day after day after day of mist and rain and fog and drizzle and patter and drench!
gaze about you piercingly at the endless ranks and shades of green across the river, and tell me if you think the long thicketed flank of the tualatin mountains is perhaps the product of uncountable years of the steadiest rain you could ever imagine! gaze down upon the broad muscle of the river and consider whence came all that water, which does not cease though the sun be bright and almost doubles its serpentine girth in spring, when months of rain and weeks of snowmelt send a rush and roar of immense proportions to the sea, the water from which all things came, including, in a sense, us! does it rain?
madame, it does. but rather than groan and moan about it, let us consider it an extraordinary gift from the One: falling free and fresh from the sky every blessed day here on the bluff is clean water, untouched and untrammeled by the greedy hand of man; and so let us step inside the chapel, and thank that which once called itself I Am Who I Am, Who giveth us profligately the sweet and savory rain; and so amen."
"does it rain here? look about you, woman. gaze long and lovingly on the lushness of the grass, and the vault of the trees, and the tangled insistence of the bushes, and the startling prevalence of moss, and the little swale near the chapel that is always moist no matter how hot and dry the weather, and tell me if you think that perhaps yes, a drop doth fall here and there, and then another, and then a thousand and million and uncountable zillions from november right through june, so that summer here is accounted from july to october, after which the rains begin and neither do they cease, day after day after day of mist and rain and fog and drizzle and patter and drench!
gaze about you piercingly at the endless ranks and shades of green across the river, and tell me if you think the long thicketed flank of the tualatin mountains is perhaps the product of uncountable years of the steadiest rain you could ever imagine! gaze down upon the broad muscle of the river and consider whence came all that water, which does not cease though the sun be bright and almost doubles its serpentine girth in spring, when months of rain and weeks of snowmelt send a rush and roar of immense proportions to the sea, the water from which all things came, including, in a sense, us! does it rain?
madame, it does. but rather than groan and moan about it, let us consider it an extraordinary gift from the One: falling free and fresh from the sky every blessed day here on the bluff is clean water, untouched and untrammeled by the greedy hand of man; and so let us step inside the chapel, and thank that which once called itself I Am Who I Am, Who giveth us profligately the sweet and savory rain; and so amen."
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