May 18, 2022 –
I relaxed as I sat in my rocking chair on my front porch last week and enjoyed the late summer rain. The rain provides a spruce-up that a sprinkling system can’t match for my yard.
Rain is necessary to make contemporary life possible by providing water for agriculture, industry, sanitation, and electrical energy. Without oxygen, we die instantly; dehydration produces the same results without water.
My wife says, “City rain and country rain are different.” Country rain has a unique smell and soothing and relaxing sound as it bounces off a tin roof.
It surprised me to hear a seed farmer say, with a slight glimmer of humor in his voice, “The rain remembers.” He explained, “I have a 300-acre seed farm, and it requires a lot of rain. Sometimes only 50-to 100 acres are rained on, leaving the other 200 acres dry. But the rain remembers, and when it returns, the other 200 acres (and maybe all 300 acres) will benefit from the falling country rain.”
The farmer is not a Gene Kelly, dancing in the rain. But his crops will produce, and people’s lives are better because the rain remembers.