It’s been raining in California. It doesn’t often rain in California.
I love the rain.
I just opened my window to listen to it as I’m writing this.
My dog, Tucker, is currently looking out a different window with this forlorn gaze like he’s imagining himself in a moody, post-punk music video.
It’s easy to complain about rain. It’s inconvenient.
I can’t sit outside, going for a walk or run feels like someone’s flicking water in my face while ruining my headphones, and every time Tucker storms inside, he’s sporting an impossible-to-remove quantity of mud.
There is a melancholy feel to a cold, rainy day. It’s fun to throw on some Thom Yorke or James Taylor and really sink into the moodiness.
In California, a downpour is such an intermittent occurrence that it demands appreciation.
California rain is mostly light, steady.
It’s generally not the overbearing deluge you might find elsewhere. I have a roommate from Ireland who knows the other side of that.
He says that when he calls his parents, the first thing they offer is a weather report.
“It’s not raining today,” his mom will tell him, excitedly, rarely.
But in California, rain is an event.
As a kid, rain used to be an inconvenience in my life. Now it’s a salve for the soul. I know that sounds a little melodramatic, but life in California changes you.
Every time it arrives, almost everyone you interact with will briefly complain before qualifying, “We do need the rain though.”
You can tell by the sheer terror on the roadways when folks — most of whom are already ill-equipped to be outside and involved in society — are faced with a mysterious, slick substance falling from the sky.
I’ve seen all manner of idiotic performances when driving. I’ve surely contributed to that tally. But nothing beats the mental image of a confused soul turned fully around on the I-5 in L.A.
There is no explanation I can come up with to rationally or irrationally explain how that happened. There was no damage to their car, no sign of an accident, and luckily they’d made it to the right shoulder.
An outrageous level of confusion had to be the cause, but the logistics confound me.
I just can’t fathom being so panicked by rain that you decide to pull a U-ey on the most congested section of the most congested interstate on the West Coast.
That's how unfamiliar Californians are with rain. I know that’s a sweeping generalization, and it’s less pronounced the further north you go in the state, but even the rain we do get up here is nothing like I faced in New Jersey. It can get heavy, but it’s usually more drizzle than squall.
I’ve driven in a downpour where you end up going 25 on the highway with your hazards on because no one can see more than a faint outline of the car 15 yards ahead of you. I’ve driven in storms of hail, snow and sleet, slogged through mud, hydroplaned through puddles, and skidded over heavy snow and ice.
I realize this sounds exactly like when your parents tell you how they used to hike to five miles in blizzards to get to school every day. But it’s true.
California has made me crave the rain. I get a legitimate childlike excitement when I see a dreary weather forecast.
That scarcity is the driving force in all this.
I have a tremendous amount of climate change anxiety, and that disappears when the rain comes. It’s the inverse of fire season, when all those anxieties manifest in real, tangible threats of the bleakest variety.
I know we’re desperate for it ecologically, which is why I stress about how much I should water my garden. It’s worthwhile to use water if it’s for fruit, right? At what point does it become wasteful?
That questioning and burden lifts on days like these.
It all stems from this mental picture I paint, and nonsensical climate math I conduct. In my head, if it rains a few times, the drought is over.
Yes, I know we’re in hell, but it showered this week.
Quarter inch of drizzle in a sixth-month span? Yeah, I’d say that does the trick. That’ll do it. Yeahhh, I’d say that’ll do it.
Me (timestamped):
Listen, I know none of that scatterbrain ecological math is accurate. I saw an article yesterday about how the Colorado River — the source of most of the West’s water — is perilously low.
Normally I’d be worried, but it rained this whole week in California. We’re all good!
As an aside, don’t send me negative climate news. Oh, you read a new scientific study that’s doomsday-level bad? I’m stunned. Gobsmacked, I dare say.
I have no need for that. I’m aware. I do not need more information about a global crisis which I have no power to solve.
I had an older relative tell me at dinner a year or so ago that “oh, the permafrost in Russia is melting and it’s actually a major problem and…”
What do you want ME to do about the permafrost, exactly? And how does it help me to know that it’s melting? It doesn’t. And you’re not the one who’s going to have to deal with the fallout.
Now let me listen to the fucking rain in peace.
That anxiety is the backdrop for why rain soothes my soul so deeply.
The other day, the temperature dropped and the winds picked up with that autumnal foreboding that a downpour was imminent. It had that smell, too. As a writer, I should have a better description for it than “the rain smell,” but you know exactly what I’m talking about.
I called the dog in before he got, somehow, even muddier. I got hit with that sort of spray-can mist from every angle as the breeze changed and he refused to come inside.
(He is exceedingly confused by the wind.)
We made it in. And then it poured.
My girlfriend finished up a call, came into the living room and sat down on the couch.
I slid open a window to hear the drops caroming off the top of the wood fence and we zoned out to the sounds of the Earth being itself for a few minutes.
No work, no thoughts. Just cheerfully, cozily sitting on a couch listening to the raindrops.
I cherish that force-you-inside, cold rain. You get to put on a sweater, snuggle up next to someone you care about with a dog at your feet, have some coffee, read a book, write, or just stop thinking and live the ultimate, happy/sad suburban fantasy for a while.
I’m writing this before I go to sleep. No sound, other than the crashing of ocean waves, is a more calming ambience to fall asleep to than the rain.
Listen to it. I mean, really listen.
The drops puttering on the roof, trickling down the side of the house, hitting the path to my backyard. I can hear the wind blowing fall leaves off trees, snatching them again after they land and sending them down that same path.
Branches are bending, crackling under the weight of the light storm. Strange nuts and theoretically edible fruits drop sporadically. Blue noise.
It comes in waves. There’s that steady, light rhythm for minutes at a time. The wind warns you before it rises. It’s less a howl than it is an exhale, picking up in pace and intensity as those distinct drops turn suddenly into a wall.
All these sounds are unremarkable in the abstract, or if you hear them too often.
Unless you really take a moment to listen. The rain demands you take a breath, crack open your window and bend an ear to a cacophony of wholesome gloom.
I know this is some awfully sappy, vaguely hippy-dippy bullshit with superfluous flowery language… about rain. Everyone in the Pacific Northwest and the British Isles are rolling their eyes.
But I mean this sincerely. In California, it is an emotional balm.
The modern world saddles us with back-aching worries, grand fears and daily apprehensions. But when you close your eyes for a few minutes and just sit there, really, truly listening to the rain, all those woes have a habit of slipping away.
*cue literally any and every Van Morrison/Neil Young song, or, more appropriately, this*
This was necessary writing.....an ecological relief, a welcome respite amid the utter madness that is eight billion humans and counting.....oh the humanity....oh Earth !
This is a very MINDFUL post - I love the sound of the rain too. And yes, we do need it!