I lived in Saudi Arabia for a year in 1976 and 1977. While I was there it rained once. School shut down and people went outside and
danced in it. Some men I stopped to talk
to in what amounted to no more than a light sprinkle clearly found it erotic and said it
reminded them of women and alcohol.
Fortunately, it stopped before I had to call the religious police on
them.
When I got back to California in 1977 it was if Mother
Nature had decided I hadn’t learned some lesson I was supposed to learn and gave us a no doubt about it drought. We
had to wash dishes by hand out of a basin in the kitchen sink and carry the
water to the bathroom to flush the toilet with.
I thought of that the other day when the rain started. For weeks now the dry spell we were in
promised to bring back those days with a vengeance. When the skies opened up at long last,
there was a huge sigh of relief. I had
to deal with our dogs, who will go to any extent to keep their delicate paws off wet pavement, but I just harnessed them up and out we went into the elements for our usual walk. Followed by a little
lecture, of course, on how spoiled they were to be California dogs who didn’t
have to do that all that often. Think of all those poor doggies living in the Northwest.
And then the rain continued.
And continued. And it’s still
raining. We walked up to the
Congregational Church last night to a concert and found walking home a serious
challenge because of the torrents of water in the streets. From drought we went straight to flooding,
and it still hasn’t stopped.
The rain has a name.
It’s called the Pineapple Express.
Cute. Who comes up with these
things? Chinook. El Niño. Can’t say
meteorologists don’t have a poetic nature. Nine inches, they say, probably before it’s
over. Four feet of snow in the
Sierras. A dream come true. 13.5 billion gallons of water added to Lake
Tahoe. What’s wrong with that! So we have a few
mud and rock slides. Cost of doing
business.
The problem is in the 1970s we had a population of 20
million. Today our population is 38
million. For every shower taken then we
need water for two showers today. Two
toilet flushes. Two restaurant customers
wanting water with their meal. The
snowpack in Southern Oregon I just read somewhere is the lowest is has been
since the 1940s. Farther north, my
friend Linda in Portland reports the rain has frozen, downed power lines and
kept people imprisoned in their homes.
She’s dependent on a fire in the fireplace to keep warm.
Who says we’re all removed from nature?
There are a lot worse things than lying in bed listening to
the raindrops falling on the roof over my head.
And knowing, in addition to the musical effect there is a practical
effect as well. As long as I keep them
short, I can go on for another while taking showers without guilt.
At least until spring turns to summer, when we go dry all
over again.
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