I Awoke to Rain in May
To be fair, I awoke not to the sound of the rain so much as to the sound of the roof's drainpipe (which is bolted to one of my exterior walls) belching whatever mixture of rocks, bird poop, and water that had collected at the beginning of its rather short journey. For most that visit my very humble home, it's not so much a soothing noise as hearing the rain pelt leaves and cement as it is the noise your toilet makes before regurgitating itself all over your bathroom floor in an retaliatory act of defiance. But for me, it's at least as calming and relaxing as forest rain.
You see, I live in Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal, a term, I'm told, that originated in NorCal's own San Quentin) where water's pretty important. Our water problem is largely due to greedy developers, short-sighted city planning, and, more than anything, the Los Angeles Cancer Basin (the area from roughly Burbank to just south of Irvine). It's a desert down there and about 100 years ago a bunch of rich guys thought, "Shit, the land is cheap here. I could probably buy a lot, plant some orange trees, and then steal water form someone else and make a fortune!" And that's what they did. Just ask the farmers of the Owens River Valley. Then, when a booming metropolis sprang up around them, they needed more and more water. Eventually, the went a couple hundred miles away and drained an entire lake that used to be not only a vacation spot for locals, but also a watering hole for the now-gone from our state Grizzly bear. And when all that water was gone, they built the San Joaquin "River," a network of artificial canals meant to take water from the San Francisco Bay Area and drive it south, to the desert (for more info, read this).
So when it rains up here, it makes me smile. It might be that I'm Irish and, therefore, genetically predisposed to rainy weather, but it's been pretty dry up here in Northern California for a few years. It'll be good to have green hills, if only for a couple days.
You see, I live in Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal, a term, I'm told, that originated in NorCal's own San Quentin) where water's pretty important. Our water problem is largely due to greedy developers, short-sighted city planning, and, more than anything, the Los Angeles Cancer Basin (the area from roughly Burbank to just south of Irvine). It's a desert down there and about 100 years ago a bunch of rich guys thought, "Shit, the land is cheap here. I could probably buy a lot, plant some orange trees, and then steal water form someone else and make a fortune!" And that's what they did. Just ask the farmers of the Owens River Valley. Then, when a booming metropolis sprang up around them, they needed more and more water. Eventually, the went a couple hundred miles away and drained an entire lake that used to be not only a vacation spot for locals, but also a watering hole for the now-gone from our state Grizzly bear. And when all that water was gone, they built the San Joaquin "River," a network of artificial canals meant to take water from the San Francisco Bay Area and drive it south, to the desert (for more info, read this).
So when it rains up here, it makes me smile. It might be that I'm Irish and, therefore, genetically predisposed to rainy weather, but it's been pretty dry up here in Northern California for a few years. It'll be good to have green hills, if only for a couple days.
Leave a comment