Robed in royal silver

Rushing through the forest,
Pelting on the leaves,
Drenching down the meadow
With its standing sheaves;

Robed in royal silver,
Girt with jewels gay,
With a gust of gladness
You pass upon your way.

--Bliss Carman

Yesterday was beautiful.  The cats and I lounged on the back deck in the warm sun.  In the afternoon, I went for a little walk.  I ended up at Green Lake Park, circled it, and -- exhausted -- rode part of the way home on light rail.  My total mileage on foot -- eight miles.  The air was a bit cool for May, but the coolness was pleasant, and was offset by the direct rays of a late Springtime sun.

Today?  Today it's raining.  Raining since I got out of bed, raining now, and forecast to rain until late tonight.  Today, my cats and I take turns standing vigil at the windows, watching the steady rainfall.  Our rooms indoors are dark, the darkness of the overcast skies enhanced by the thick foliage growing close outside my windows.  

I'm a native of the Northwest Corner, but even I tire of the rain as we drag our way through the long, dark winter.  But in the spring, in May as the days grow longer, the rain -- occurring sporadically, interspersed with sufficient sunshine -- can feel softly soothing.  

Our love-hate relationship with rain is a Northwest thing.  David Guterson perfectly evoked the atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest when he entitled his best-selling novel Rain Falling on Cedars.  No cedars in my yard, but I have tall spruce and birch behind the house, and my windows are hemmed in by lilac, Western azalea, rhododendron, laurel, holly, Japanese cypress, and butterfly bush.  Sitting indoors, reading, I often feel I live deep within a forest -- even though my house is on a rather small lot not far from downtown Seattle.

Especially today, as the rain falls quietly but steadily.  A few minutes ago, I was sitting at a table, reading.  I looked up, out the window, and stared transfixed, as though hypnotized.  The rain steadily fell, hitting the leaves of the foliage, merging into larger drops; those larger drops bent the leaves, and fell to the ground.  Repeatedly, over and over.  The rain was not, as you might expect,  an irritation, but a blessing from the skies above -- watering all the growth surrounding my house, doing a far more effective job than I could ever do with a hose, and supplying dissolved nitrates to the soil as it fell.

Most of America seems to be suffering from drought -- even our cousins across the Cascades in Eastern Washington.  We are one of the few areas in the nation that has an abundance of rainfall.  Enough so that Seattle can collect reservoirs of water, large enough to supply all the water the city needs even if the coming summer turns out to be -- like last summer -- unusually hot and dry.  

How long will this abundance continue?  I don't know.  The world seems destined to grow ever drier and less habitable, even as the Earth's population multiplies.  I can't see how it will end well.  I may be living in what proves to be one of the last livable areas of the world.  Not really a pleasant thought, but better than living in one of the vast areas of the country where rainfall and snowfall are decreasing, rivers and lakes are shrinking, and aquifers left over from the ice ages are being rapidly drained dry.