There is something about rain. It makes me think. I find myself sitting; listening to it hit the ground, each little drop. Singularly it’s barely audible, but in mass it forms a chorus of sounds, rhythms and melodies. You can hear the frequency pick up, slow down or flat out stop. When interacting with various objects it becomes more interesting. I’d be cliché to say like rain on a tin roof, but it is an addicting sound. I find it much more interesting to listen to rain react with plant life.
Some of my deepest thinking has been during a rainstorm. I hunt; to most people this is all about going out to “score the big buck” or to “bag that wild turkey that you’ve seen waddling around the cornfield.” I cannot claim to be a devout hunter, good at it, or even to have a wall of trophies, but it is a sport that I enjoy. It helps yield for a better understanding of nature but further it provides me a reason to remove myself from society. I can withdraw, even if just for a few hours, into a completely different world. Escaping the brutally routine everyday commotion that we subject ourselves to; I experience life at its most primitive. I enjoy camping for just the same reason. Maybe I’m a recluse deep down or maybe I’m just a confused hermit. Regardless, one of my favorite past times is listening to the rain in the forest. Bundled up in rain gear with my back against a tree scanning the woods, or in a tent listening to the rain.
Light rain usually yields a fog in the Northern New England forests that in itself loses me in fantastical thought my mind wanders form thought to bizarre differing thought. Conversely outright downpours, the real deep rain that bounces off leaves in big drops and sounds more like millions of tiny slaps causes deeper thoughts. Time manages to decompress itself in these wooded monsoons.
Snow, well that is another story. That will have to wait for another blog.
I had never really thought about this until I sat here in Iraq trying to remember the last time I saw precipitation. That is what sparked these notions. When we left New Jersey it was snowing, or darn near it. We missed the Kuwait rainstorms that I had heard so much about. The talcum-powder-fine desert dust mixed with sheets of rain, however brief, purportedly yields a sugar-cookie-dough-like substance which cakes to boots, tires etc just adding weight. I’m not sorry I missed that. But here in Baghdad, the lack of rain was apparent.
I did witness my first sandstorm. The day started cast in shades of crimson and red overcast clouds, not unlike a winter evening in New England prior to an impending snowstorm. The until now non-existent wind slowly began to whip up and by 10:00 it was intermittently blowing fierce enough to cause the canvas shade coverings outside to pop and snap. With it came sand, the same fine sand that was in Kuwait. There it was everywhere, heck it was a desert. There wasn’t anything but sand. But here, in Baghdad that sand was just stuck to everything I saw and with no visible reason for it being there. There was concrete and gravel everywhere. Like Oakies in the dust bowl, you had to wander about trying to do the best not to get dust in your eyes, nose and mouth. This, of course proved impossible. Initially on my arrival, it seemed like the locals had some kind of freakish party where they sprayed a light coat of water on everything just to throw bags of dust about just to watch it stick; merry pranksters wreaking havoc just for obsessive compulsive officers to drop their jaws at the mess they made and itch to clean it up.
I soon realized that this wind was the reason for all of this. It was the reason that I spend hours, and money on Swifer wet-jet pads cleaning my living area. This storm was mild I was told by those who had been here before me. But it was part of something bigger. Somebody up there must like me, because this necessary evil, this sandstorm gave way to rain. That night, as I left work to return to my living quarters, the wind died down and I felt it. Rain, slow drops of it here and there. It dawned on me then that it had been over a month since I had seen any form of precipitation. I had been far too busy to notice up until now. While driving back, lightning flashed and lit the otherwise dark and clouded skies and the reverberations of lighting in the distance heightened my alert. Mentally I was confusing it for distant explosions.
I reached the sanctity of FOB Prosperity and could relax my guard a little. I was a bit edgy, that drive always amplifying my vigilance. The sky opened up and the rain quickly puddle on all surfaces. This, just in time for me to walk to my CHU (living quarters), “you can’t win them all,” I thought. I spent the evening looking out the door at the rain and listening to it pelt the trailer roof…thinking.