It Rained a Murder

The weather has all of us in a funk. It simply will not stop raining for more than an hour or two. Yesterday I saw the sun and ran and did a load of laundry on the short cycle so I could hang it to dry before it started to rain again. It wouldn't have dried, but the wind is so stiff that it dried in just an hour or two, and when the rain began again I took it all in.

The yard looks like hell, the animals are living in a swamp, and I've had to replant my peas twice and it looks like I may have to do it again. I have a few seedlings started in the greenhouse, but overall it looks like this will be a very late garden this year.

My husband can't stand it. He hates the rain and cold with a passion, because he works outside most of the time. A fair chunk of the day he spends on his back under a car, and if he has to lie in a puddle that's not going to put anybody in a very good mood. He has begun to make noises about trying to get away somewhere warm. I can't say as I blame him. I'd like to go somewhere dry, at least.

I know I bitch and moan about the rain and mud every spring (and every fall) but in fact, we are at more than double the average precipitation for March. In a normal year, we expect a generous 7" of rain in March - this year we have received over 16". Really, frayed tempers and muddy boots are the least of it. The rain can have deadly consequences, as it did for the small community of Darrington, just a few miles south of us.

Unofficial death toll climbs to 24 in Washington state mudslide

A square mile of mountain simply slid down into the Stillaguamish river, taking some thirty homes and a hundred or more  people with it. The rescue effort has by now become a recovery mission, but the truth is that probably many bodies will never be recovered. The mud is more than fifteen feet deep in some areas, and the river is backing up into a lake, drowning more land.

And still it rains, hampering the recovery efforts, making the debris field unstable and too dangerous to search. Will it never stop? Will we ever be dry again, will we ever be warm? Sitiing here in my chilly, damp house, I am reminded of Tom Robbins' passage, in his debut novel Another Roadside Attraction, on the subject of the local rains:

“And then the rains came. They came down from the hills and up from the sound. And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the raven. Ancient Shaman's rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled the huckleberries, ran into the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating. And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure.”

If you want to help the families and communities devastated by the slide, you can donate to the Red Cross here.