Every Day Rain
December 18, 2012
Weather Report
by David Budbill, from We’ve Still Got Feet
The weather is horrible here on Judevine Mountain.
It’s dark and cold all winter. Every day rain and snow
beat on your head. And the sun never shines. Then
it’s spring and more rain and ice and mud, too. And
after that, the blackflies eat you alive and then the
deerflies and then the mosquitoes and then it’s fall
before you ever noticed it was summer. Then there
might be a couple of weeks of decent weather and
then it starts to rain and snow again. It’s just awful
living here. I don’t think you’d like it here at all.
You better go find your own miserable place to live.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m a farmer’s daughter, or if it’s because I was raised in Minnesota, but talking about the weather is a normal part of my day. (Here’s a video clip about “How to Talk Minnesotan” on YouTube.) We are in the darkest days of the year, so it can be a challenge to find something positive to say. Winter in Seattle is almost invariably rainy and gray, cold, but not freezing (most of the time). It’s true that if you waited for good weather to do some planned task, you’d never get anything done.
And if not the weather, it’s something else. This is life.
“There are seven or eight categories of phenomena in the world that are worthy of talking about, and one of them is the weather.”
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek
December 18, 2012 at 6:27 am
Since my varnishing work is weather-dependent, I tend to be weather-obsessed. And back in my sailing decades, I learned how to be weather-obsessed with a certain degree of accuracy.
Now, living in drought country, I’d give anything for rain. Or fog. Or drizzle. Or thunderstorms. Even thundersnow. Ah, well. I guess drought is just another miserable place to live. 😉
Being from Iowa, I anticipate that clip being both familiar and hilarious. (I know about Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery.) I’m off to watch it.
December 18, 2012 at 5:18 pm
It was light a full 15 minutes longer today, even with heavy cloud cover, though the sun did try valiantly to shine a sunset! I asked people around me if they had noted that days stopped being dark at 4:30, they hmmmed and hawwwed and the smiles that spread across the faces with hope! Amazing!
December 19, 2012 at 1:09 am
I love the picture & I love the text, and of course I agree: its worth talking about the weather, its both outside and inside of us!