The Sound of the Rain
A Seasonal Story
Water slid off the tips of the leaves and fell down to the mud at the base of the trees, and more water plinked against the leaves and fell in between the leaves and fell down to the ferns below and rolled off the ends of the ferns and covered the ground. It formed in little rivulets and pools, darkening the rocks and collecting in puddles. It flowed down into the rushing stream, which dropped down over a series of tiny waterfalls and ran away down the mountain.
We walked along under that plinking canopy, stepping through puddles and ignoring the dampness of our feet. By now, the water soaked our clothes and hair. From years past, I knew not to fight the dampness. If you got angry, if you let yourself worry about the unfairness of it all, you lost. You’d struggle mightily in vain and come to despair, growing frustrated. You’d find yourself more impotent and less able.
If you accepted that you’d be miserable, that the cold and the wet weren’t going away, you’d be okay. You’d be just as cold and wet, but you wouldn’t have trouble handling that. You didn’t want to be wet and cold, but it wasn’t any more unfair than anything else in the world, and a good deal less unfair than a lot of what went on. The trick, in other words, was not to get emotional about it.
We splashed along, through a stream that had once been a path – as recently as that morning, in fact. We were dirty and wished that we weren’t, but I tried not to wish anything, because that can be a trap, too. You can’t keep the dirty cold, or the wet rain out, so you might as well let them in. Or stop wasting energy trying to keep them out, at least. Your skin is still waterproof, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
The leaves were still green, even though it was October. October first, but still October. Over a week ago I’d seen a family putting out the Halloween decorations – more than a month early.
It didn’t feel like Halloween here in the forest. It didn’t feel like fall either, maybe a cold spring or a freak summer cold snap. The sky was grey and the light down here on the forest floor was bad. Seemed darker than it was. I guessed that it was past four, but it felt like seven.
My friend stopped in front of me. He looked bedraggled and his pack was soaked through. He pointed at the stones ahead, which looked very slippery. I didn’t feel bold, but he began clambering down and I had no choice but to follow. There was a gnawing in my stomach and chest, and I could tell I was dehydrated. Funny how that can happen in the rain, but it does. You stop drinking water, because you don’t feel like drinking any. You don’t want to eat anything cold, either. Or much of anything at all for that matter. I thought I was hungry, too, but I couldn’t tell.
You feel lonely at times like these, even with another person. The quietness of the world – even though the rain was loud – descends upon your soul in a drab, gray, dreary way. It isn’t loneliness so much as the feeling that you are very small, but the best way to describe it is loneliness. I was glad he was there. I don’t think my friend noticed it. He told me once that he never felt lonely – even by himself – except when he was surrounded by other people, and even then only in certain circumstances.
“Nate,” he said through the rain. “Are you going to go as anything for Halloween this year?”
This seemed a most inappropriate question, but as I said he didn’t seem to notice the mood of things. Or maybe he was trying to keep his mind – and mine – off of the rain.