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Rain, Glorious RainSeptember 15, 2007 I'd almost forgot what rain sounded like. This summer we've had little sprinkles and a very few cloudbursts, when you can barely see the trees 20 feet away but in 10 minutes the only reminder of rain is the dripping of the leaves and maybe an ephemeral puddle on the dirt road. Rain drumming steadily on the skylights? The half-awake brain took a moment to identify it, and another moment to remember that Rhodry was, as usual, sleeping out on the deck. I flicked on the outside light: Rhodry was hunkered down near the door, nose pointed dryward. I opened the door, he stood up and shook, I let him in. It takes a good rain to get through a Malamutt's fur. Rhodry was pretty wet. After I toweled him off, he shook again; droplets flew, but not as heavy as before. There wasn't much of a second cutting this year, but upstate New York -- where a lot of our hay comes from -- got a lot more rain than we did, so here's hoping there'll be enough and the price won't be too high. I'm halfway through Wallace Stegner's The Big Rock Candy Mountain, an early novel based on his growing up. At the moment it's 1918, the place is Saskatchewan not far from Montana; the summer rains didn't come and the wheat crop failed. Bo Mason -- the fictional counterpart of Stegner's father, George -- has hit on a way to make enough money to get the family through the winter: bootlegging. Reminds me of Tony Kaduck's song "Princes of the Clouds": "The thirties came / went two years without the rain / now I've a factory job and room and board in town." The song's narrated by a World War I aviator who turns barnstormer in the twenties -- "single and free is the only way to be" -- and then settles down to farming. Where isn't clear, though it's clearly the North American west. One of the few locales mentioned by name is Calgary, so I imagine southeastern Alberta, or maybe the same part of southwestern Saskatchewan Stegner was writing about. In Stegner's novel, the rains never came, but the snows arrive early: Bo just barely makes it home, frostbitten but alive, from an epic booze-buying trip south of the border. Out in a blizzard, looking for roads that can be hard to find in good weather, driving a cranky Tin Lizzie whose radiator is prone to freeze even when the engine's running? Makes me glad to be snug inside, listening to the rain on the skylights and the snoring of a damp Malamutt in the kitchen.
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