Back when I worked in Europe, most of us spent at least part of our daily commute on foot. I”ve never particularly appreciated rain, mind you, so when Prague”s streets puddled up the beauty of damp cobblestones was lost in a stream of complaints — soaked socks, dripping pant legs, whatever.
Our film critic was just the opposite. Every day he walked a couple miles from home to the office and on days when I sat miserably wringing things out, he would bound in with the most genuine of smiles. Only the warm, sunny spells caused him to moan.
I haven”t changed, really. My car features a little design flaw that dumps pooled water onto the driver”s seat if one dares to open the door during or after a deluge. And a few punctures in the roof directly above my office here at the stately Record-Bee compound turns each downpour into a frantic scramble to cover electronics and deploy buckets, all while being spattered with indoor rain. During last week”s storm we collected enough spillover from my office to raise the lake by at least a foot.
Truly. I would not stretch the truth, I”m just not very good at math.
Yet I”ve come to understand some of the joy my old friend experienced on gray, drizzly days. I arrived in Lake County late this summer during a long, hot and utterly parched stretch of the three year drought. Last year the area received only a few inches of rain. Entering the fall of this much wetter year, measurements still reached barely half of normal expectations.
So my initial impression of the lake included matted shorelines, dried up coves and dozens of stranded vessels. The pontoon boats propped on cracked and weed covered banks told a story out of the past, one of summer breaks and family fun cancelled by a miserly weather pattern. One could hear faint echoes of laughter from the empty storefronts along Library Park.
OK, maybe I have a vivid imagination. In grad school I used to tell my students that, for example, I noticed the basketball coach looking my direction in a game”s waning seconds, imploring me to step down from the stands to take the final shot. On another occasion, when Ronald Reagan visited town, I arrived late to class claiming the president called late the previous night wanting to “party.”
The class would just roll their eyes and mumble about my fantasy life.
Anyway, for perhaps the first time in my non-fantasy life I”ve watched with wonder as the rains came down — after draping my office computer in old raincoats, of course. The momentary flooding caused some damage and quite a bit of irritation, certainly. But watching the lake swell, hearing waves slap rhythmically against the shrinking shore, seeing boats magically right themselves well, it has all been rather interesting, maybe even fun.
OK, nowhere near as interesting as my fictional world.
Still, over a two-day period, I watched nature perform CPR on Lake County. Streams roared to overflowing and the lake jumped past 1.0 on the Rumsey gauge. Sometime this week it may clear 2.0. A year ago, remember, the waterline peaked at 2.33. Just a few weeks ago there was considerable angst as lake levels sagged close to negative 1.0 on the famous scale — near the modern record low. As a result, many local residents lapsed into tales of the era when tourists flooded in and resorts thrived, as if they were things of the past never to return.
Several seemed resigned to Lake County”s supposed has-been status.
This period of rain has been inspiring, therefore. If it continues — and if the drought eventually breaks — it may lift the general conversation from its depths, as well.
At the very least, I now know just why my colleague in Prague burst into a broad smile every time it rained. Oh, I still gripe driving to work on a saturated cloth seat and mutter as water drips from the fluorescent lamp over my head. But I”ve learned that rain brings with it some promise. And it may drown out woeful nostalgia.
Until the next dry spell, that is.
