Photo by Kristaps Grundsteins on Unsplash
…You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows…
— ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ by Bob Dylan, 1965
I didn’t need the weather man to tell me we had a 100% chance of rain yesterday.
I just looked out the window.
September is reminding me of a month I spent in Seattle, trying to make things work with a former girlfriend from college.
Not reminding me of the “trying to make things work” part, but of the “rain every day” part.
Although there was definitely an unpleasant similarity between those two things.
When I run into friends, they say something like, “Well, we need the rain.” This is an acknowledgment that we had a lousy snowpack last winter, and then a dry spring and summer, and everyone was expecting a forest fire… which we had, and it threatened to burn down the houses along Lower Blanco Road, but then it didn’t. So everyone got excited for no reason.
Anyway, when people say, “Well, we need the rain…” I can tell from their tone of voice that they don’t really mean it. What they really mean is, “Where the hell was the rain we needed earlier this summer when we were freaked out about a possible forest fire which we then had and thank God nobody’s house got destroyed but where the hell was the rain when we really needed it?”
Actually, we don’t need the rain, any more than we needed the drought.
There’s a personal aspect to this, and a community aspect. I personally don’t need rain because my roof is old and I have buckets all around the house when it rains like this.
But the community also doesn’t need rain — not at this time of year — and the proof is the announcement on Friday that the County Manager has officially issued a disaster declaration and also closed part of County Road 500, five miles east of the Hwy 151 intersection, due to flood damage.
Obviously, we have “rain we need” on one hand, and “disaster declarations” on the other.
And we’ve all noticed that the crew reconstructing Hwy 160 through the center of town don’t seem to work when it’s raining. I don’t blame them. Who wants to work in the rain? Not me. But I also want the job finished before I’m too old and blind to qualify for a driver’s license.
Some people, when they say, “Well, we need the rain…” seem to believe that the water actually does them any good. But the sad fact is, all the water just goes into the river and then flows downstream to Arizona and California. Sure, I like lettuce and avocados and almonds, but I will gladly give them up, for a roof that doesn’t leak.
“But what about the trees?” someone is saying. “Our beautiful pine trees? Don’t they deserve to live?”
From what I’ve heard, the larger pine trees around here are, like, 200 years old. Maybe 300. They know how to get by. Does anyone think they haven’t been through all kinds of weather?
That’s a lot older than I’ll ever get to.
I’m not saying it should never rain. That would be crazy. But enough is enough.
Whoever has been doing the rain dance, they can stop now.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.