Rain

 

 

 

Photo courtesy of France Dewaghe (www.pbase.com/birdbum)

Sitting on our dilapidated couch watching early evening rain pour past our open front door on to the gravel parking lot and yards beyond, listening to soothingly low, pensive rumbles of thunder, brings to mind the old trope of a world washed clean. No pattering showers falling lightly on the world, this steady, thorough sluicing over roofs and cars and leaves of trees promises to carry the week's dust back down to the earth, leaving behind a vista vibrantly restored. Sometimes, I wish this could be done for human histories and lives.

Mind you, I'm not nearly so poetic when standing in the middle of a field as rain douses my head. In sodden boots and clinging trousers, so long as there is no danger to the creatures, fieldwork must go on. And it does. Our sparrows don't change their daily plans for rain. They live outdoors after all; running home to wait out the inconvenience of bad weather is not among their options. Sparrows continue on as usual, and so do we, dodging downpours beneath foliage much as they do, emerging again once the worst drenching has passed. It may make for some definite grumping, marching back and forth through the tall wet grass with my arms squished to my torso for warmth, glowering at the lack of rain pants that ensures I remain wet from nearly the waist down (water creeps up the fabric of regular pants as if infiltrating a sponge, I've discovered, even under the hem of a good rain jacket), but it also makes for an interesting philosophical point.

It's a very different thing to be out in nature, and a part of it, than it is to simply visit and appreciate it. Several years ago, before I left the field for a while and became accustomed to the physical “comforts” of the indoors, I was much more at peace with the both the joy and the privation that come of being intimately tuned to nature, and much more articulate about it as well. For me, at least, there has always been measure of inner peace to be found in accepting and adapting to the uncontrollable elements around me, and a sense of belonging that comes with respect for the surrounding world I experience with so much more of my being, rather than merely seeing it with the eyes and thinking about it in the head. That is, if I can get over being wet. It takes time to build, or to rebuild, rhythms that deep. I can feel the memories of them stirring even as I sputter and grumble about my squelching shoes. Someday soon, I hope to be writing about them again in the way I used to be.