1. The smell of it.
Fresh, clean, growing...I don't have better words to describe it. I think of stories of how animals can smell creeks and rivers, and I think it must smell like this to them. It seems to me that the earth is getting a cleansing, renewing shower.
2. The sound on the roof.
We have a patio right outside the bedroom window, and the patio has a plastic covering. The rain makes a wonderful tinging on it. Even on regular roofs, I love when the storm is going strong enough that you can hear the drops as you lie in bed and listen in the quiet.
3. Green trees. (and shrubs and grass and fields and moss....)
I love looking around and seeing so much green everywhere, no matter what season it is. The light green of new growth, the dark green of the conifers, the patchwork of greens in a forest scene...they make me happy. And leads us to...
4. No lawn watering.
About July of every year, the lawns in Oregon start to go brown. No one panics. No one installs sprinkler systems. (Well, almost no one.) The dads are happy to get a little break from mowing. The lawns stay brown for August, and most of September too, but then they turn green again. Having lived in Utah and having so much family there myself, I know that they have to water their lawns constantly, almost year-round, to keep them green. I love that we don't. My mom would pull out the sprinkler every once in a while and put it on the grass when it got brown, but it was mostly just for us kids to run through.
5. Rivers and creeks and streams and springs.
They run year round. They actually are deep enough to swim in (if you can stand the cold). They make hiking interesting. They are everywhere. We have a little spring in our backyard, coming out the side of the little hill, with horsetail growing and filling in that corner. They have fish that swim and live in them. I love this!
6. It cleans the car.
The only time I need the guy at the gas station to clean my windshield is when it's summer and I've been on a road trip. Otherwise, the rain does it for me.
7. Wearing a rain jacket.
Oregonians are notorious for eschewing the use of umbrellas. They take up a whole hand! You can't use them if it's windy, which is a lot of the time, especially on the coast. Try loading groceries into a car and trying to keep it up. No, thank you. Put on the rain jacket and it doesn't matter. You have your own personal little warm, dry world inside the hood. And you get a similar situtation to listening to the rain on the roof, but instead, it's your own little roof of your jacket's hood over your head.
8. Hiking in the rain!
Wearing the rain jacket means you can do whatever you want, no matter the weather. Like hiking! Even better is to combine the rain pants, and then you can go through brush, sit on logs, get swiped by dripping limbs, and it doesn't matter. Plus, you get the trails to yourself more. The world looks greener, fresher, when it's dripping. The waterproof hiking shoes are now worth the price you paid for them.
9. Watching light through the rain.
I'm talking about when you look off into the distance and you can see the sun shining through a rainstorm. It looks incredible the way the darkness is lit from behind. Other times, the clouds will part for rays to pierce directly down to the ground. There is no other light like that.
10. Moss in the forest.
This is part of the overall green canopy that exists in the forests and fields. It's not just on the north side of a tree, it's on the entire tree. Soft and spongy, I love the way it covers rocks and logs and makes even waterfalls look green.
11. The biggest trees on earth.
Last week, Brian and I went with his family up to see the "Big Tree," as we call it, or the Doerner Fir in officialdom. It is, according to the sign, the largest Douglas Fir living today in the world. It takes about an hour of driving on forest logging roads to get there and was found by an elk hunter in 1980. It has a diameter of 11.9 feet (I think?) and is said to be 500-800 years old. You can't get a bore into the center, so it's hard to tell. They claim you could build 70 houses from that one tree, and that it was a youngster when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Yeah. Big tree.
This is me at its base on a different trip, actually one of our first dates, in the spring of 2008. Now they've got a fence so you don't fall down the hill trying to look up at it. It looks like this when you lay on the trunk and look up:
The redwoods in Northern California, the giant sequoias, are equally impressive. And I love that they're only a couple hours from me now. I wish I had been around 150 years ago to see some of the monster old growth.
12. Swimming in it.
You can't wait around for it to be sunny to go swimming in Oregon. And hey, you're wet anyway, right? I have a couple favorite memories of swimming in the rain. We went to Hawaii in January when I was younger and it rained the entire week. But it was still 80 outside and we went swimming in the ocean, which felt like bath water, it was so warm. Also, one year at Shasta it rained the whole week. Mostly miserable, yes. But one night, all the girls went down to the docks and went swimming in the rain. I still remember the mists hanging over the water and the way the typical Shasta was transformed.
13. When it stops.
:) Who doesn't love when it clears up?
Ok, so I'll admit that there are lots of drawbacks to the rain. It ruins the whole effect when I straighten my hair. You can't plan much for an outdoor wedding. A day at the beach is a tricky proposition. Stargazing has to be spontaneous and can be disappointing. But overall, what a beautiful, wonderful thing the rain is! Feel free to add something that you love about the rain that I don't have on here. :)
