Musings - on the editor's mind

Last week the rains returned. Rain, blessed rain. When was the last time there was standing water in farm fields and the sloughs were full? April. It’s been five months of dry.

More rain fell in the Skagit Valley last week, as October ended and November began, than the rest of October: Three inches in eight days. There has never before been three inches in three consecutive months between April’s start and September’s end.

And to hear the rain, as much wind as water, passing through the trees, nature making herself known, no subtlety, roaring. And wonderous gray skies days on end. Just like the olden days, the cliché folks far away have of western Washington: all rain all the time.

Wild it was Thursday night. Will it last? I am taking notes.

The several rainstorms were substantial: large, loud rain drops, gusts of wind rattling trees and downing branches, a wind made visible by rain coating windows as well as moving tree tops.

Over an inch of rain fell Thursday, and another inch Friday through Sunday. Then, the rain ended by dawn. Overnight, to Sunday morning, the wet left, pushed out by steady winds that blew down small tree branches, a wind that again was as much seen as heard.

John Muir recounts climbing a tree, almost certainly a redwood, and riding it, a bucking bronco, in a storm. Exhilaration, not fear, filled him. He experienced nature into the marrow of his bones. He wanted more. He took all he could get. His full embrace of nature changed him. He expanded the world inside him while honoring the wild all around him.

This paean to the wind, rain and wild, great to say, “bring it on.” But the flip side, of loving nature all the time, is to welcome equally months of drought, sky, whether blue or not, the sun, farm fields drying to desert. It is all of a piece.