In Praise of Oregon Rain

We’re celebrating tonight in Portland, because the rain has returned. Not a lot; it’s a classic light misty Portland rain.

But we needed it badly to quell the Eagle Creek Fire that has choked our downtown skies several times since it started more than two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, because (allegedly) teenagers were playing with fireworks in the parched wilderness of the Columbia Gorge.

After an all-time record of cumulative rain and snowfall last winter (more than an average year’s rain in less than five months through February), Portland had had only a hundredth of an inch on August 13, and a hundredth of an inch on Jun 16.

In 15 days, the Eagle Creek Fire grew to more than 48,000 acres as of Sunday morning, when it was still only 32 percent contained; and the day before, we had the worst air quality in the nation.

In honor of the most welcome return of atmospheric moisture, I am posting an essay I wrote for the Roseburg (Oregon) News-Review my first spring back in my home state after ten years in Boston. It was published May 2, 1988, and is still on of my favorite pieces . . . .

IN PRAISE OF OREGON RAIN

It’s raining in town again. And there’s something very comforting about that.

Rain has its own character in different parts of the country. When I returned to Oregon in the summer of 1987 after 10 years on the East Coast, I had no idea that one of the many things I had missed and would appreciate was the rain in Oregon.

In addition to the years in Boston, I had traveled one summer in Mexico with my family, and worked another summer in Louisiana.

The summer rain in tropical areas is like an angry lover or an avenging angel. It comes down in torrents nearly every afternoon about 3 or 4. The sheets of water are so thick, you can barely see a hundred feet in front of you. The streets become small rivers for an hour or two -- lakes if the drainage system gets clogged.

Even in Boston, the summer rains are thunderous and proud, flashing with light and crackling the sky, although the show tends to occur at dusk rather than in the afternoon.

Oregon rain is more like a spouse than a lover: steady, calm, and dependable. It pitters on the shoulder of your jacket, hums on the roof of the car, massages the house. Sometimes it comes and goes several times in an afternoon, but inconspicuously, without a lot of show.

While I’ve seen spectacular thunder and lightning in my home state, and slow, steady rain elsewhere, the opposite seems to be the norm in both places.

You’re more likely to get a soft mist in Oregon. Elsewhere in the country, rains at any time of year are heavier, more dreary. I can better understand people feeling down when faced with that kind of rain.

But the caress of Oregon rain is very pleasant. I sometimes like to go for a run in it, and I know I won’t necessarily come home drenched to the bone. (On the other hand, getting drenched to the bone occasionally can be an invigorating experience.)

Of course there are the usual benefits of any rain: the way it paints the hills and trees a more luscious green, the way it cools off a hot afternoon or dulls the edge of sharp winter air, the way it filters out the dust and pollens for the benefit of people with allergies, the cool fresh smell it leaves when it has passed.

When I started work at a daily newspaper in southern Oregon in the fall of 1987, the state was in the midst of a drought that went on into mid November. It was weird. It didn’t feel like home.

When the rain finally came, there may have been a general sigh of relief, but after three days people in the office began to complain. But I felt wonderful. Everything was in place again. God was in his heaven, all was right with the world if it was raining steadily in Oregon.

The following spring, we had a more practical reason to watch for rain. Total rain and snowfall were less than usual for the winter. River levels in April were comparable to those in late summer. A drought even worse than the previous year's was in the offing.

This could mean voluntary rationing: short showers, watering the lawn only on certain days, and not washing the car until it changed color. More frightening was the prospect of another forest fire season without ready supplies of that cooling, quenching liquid: smoke in the air, lost jobs, even less water for recreation and hygiene, and perhaps more deaths.

Our bodies are composed of 65 percent water, perhaps? We speak of Mother Earth or Mother Nature, but the land is really only a father, and a distant stepfather at that. Water has a better claim to maternity.

Our amphibious ancestors crawled out of the oceans and rivers to the hot, dry world of rock, dirt, and air, and they brought their watery home with them, inside, to keep them alive.

Each of us relives that awesome journey from home to a strange land when he or she is pushed out of the warm ocean of the womb to the harsh, dry world outside. No wonder most of us cry.

So when the rain falls, try to show a little respect. It is, after all, your mother you are cursing.