Rain? Rain!

Tonight and tomorrow we expect to have the first real rainfall of the year. Our ground is still snow covered and frozen. That means almost no water will percolate into the ground. It will all become runoff. The prospects are interesting and, once again, we’re glad the house is on higher ground. If only the driveway drained better.

the backyard “wet spot” in late March

Photo by J. Harrington

The USGS topographic quad sheet for our area designates a “wet spot” in our back yard. The photo above shows what it looked like at the end of March a couple of years ago. In a good year it gets visited by a pair or so of waterfowl. Sometimes the visitors are wood ducks, other times mallards or Canada geese. We’ll try to remember to take a photo or two on Sunday so we can compare early with late March wet spots.

We’re not yet at the time of year when we can relax about snow melting a day or so after it falls. Maybe by the end of the month? Last month, and the one before that, was colder than “normal,” and this month may be trying to follow that trend. The inevitability of warmer days arriving makes the transition tantalizing and frustrating for some of us, kind of like youngsters during early December.

Rain

By Peter Everwine

Toward evening, as the light failed

and the pear tree at my window darkened,

I put down my book and stood at the open door,

the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,

a smell of wet clay in the wind.

Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,

half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain

drummed against our tent, I heard

for the first time a loon’s sudden wail

drifting across that remote lake—

a loneliness like no other,

though what I heard as inconsolable

may have been only the sound of something

untamed and nameless

singing itself to the wilderness around it

and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father

and of good companions gone

into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain

and the soft lapping of water, and did not know

whether it was grief or joy or something other

that surged against my heart

and held me listening there so long and late.

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