Remember This Rain

It was supposed to be a day of lightning without rain, of clouds without rain.

At least that’s what the forecasters predicted, alerting us last Thursday of yet another “Red Flag” weather day, meaning there was a high probability of fire starts from lightning and gusty winds, with little hope of rain to mitigate the danger.

Except this time, the forecasters were wrong.

Well. They were right about the lightning. There was plenty of that.

I was in bed, trying to sleep, when the first flashes arrived.

It’s hard to sleep in fire season in these parts when there is lightning around. My neighbor across the way has a bright orange light by her driveway that looks a little like fire if I glance at it wrong, especially since it casts a glowing reflection on my open windows. I thought for a moment last night, when the lightning first started and I peered outside, that a small fire had already broken out right across the creek, and my heartrate spiked for a minute, before I realized my mistake.

Thankfully, though, this lightning did not come by itself, like the forecasters feared.

It also brought rain.

Sometime in the night, the rain arrived, the first measurable rainfall we’ve had since March.

Rain that spit spattered splattered down. Rain (and wind) that woke me and propelled me out of bed (after I finally got to sleep) to close all the wide open windows because water was sneaking in from outside. Rain and wind that did a wild dance with the power lines and knocked out power in the middle of the night so that we (and about 8,000 other people, according to the PG&E announcement) woke up to darkness. Rain that made the earth smell  sweet. Rain that gave a good soaking to the plants and left puddles on the deck.

There were a few small fire starts from the lightning, but since there was rain, more than anyone predicted, that helped with the fires and kept them from morphing into anything serious.

I went to sleep worried about the Red Flag warning, imagining a fire on the other side of the creek.

I woke up to wind and rain and wet earth. I didn’t even care that much that the power was out.

Such hope.

Because I keep buying plants, friends. And seeds. But I had a moment last week when I started to wonder if it made sense, if it was just silly.

Because the seeds need rain to grow. And what is the point, if the climate has already changed, and every summer from here on out will be dryer and hotter than the one before, and if this summer, the hottest one ever, will actually be cooler than next summer and all the summers to come?

That this is as good as it will ever be, and that from here on out, it just will get worse and worse and worse, hotter and hotter and hotter?

That depresses me to no end.

And possibly we are all doomed. But. I can still buy seeds and plant them. California poppy seeds. Native California wildflower mixes. I can care for the birds that come to my feeders. I can hunt down the star thistle, trim the invasive blackberry plants, recycle, donate, pray. Maybe all of it is silly, the planting, the little bits of hope. But what else can I do? What can any of us do? Just what we know. Just the best we can.

And there’s this: it rained last night, when nobody thought it would.  Maybe there is more to this story than we know now, and maybe the story isn’t finished yet.

So remember.

Remember in days to come.

Remember this rain.