Rain, Rain Go Away
I started writing about the rain on January 1 and here it is the middle of January’s and I’m still doing it. This has been an unusually wet month here on the hilltop. Last night sounded like the wrath of God with the wind howling and rain pelting the house and windows. It all started yesterday once I landed and it hasn’t let up yet. According to the online weather report, this should continue through either Tuesday or Thursday (its been moving around). The world around me is one big fog this morning and while its not that I haven’t lived in harsher climates than this one, but its just that I’ve gotten used to nicer weather and I am starting to find that I miss it. I haven’t ridden my motorcycles for a few weeks and this is usually a nice season for that since it gives me a chance to wear my outerwear without getting hot. I want to go later in the week to Palm Springs (actually La Quinta) to visit my friend Steven, who has just built a house there and has moved his wintertime act from Delray Beach. I want to be neighborly and pay a visit, but I also want to get out and ride like the wind with the sun overhead. I can’t do that unless it stops raining.
It seems like the bad weather is easing up a bit and I do expect some sunny weather coming back our way again soon, but I also look out over the radar screen over the North Pacific Ocean and see at least two formations that look alarming like more atmospheric rivers heading this way. So far, every time someone has asked if all these storms has advisedly affected us on or hilltop, I am inclined to say no and tell people ho lucky we are in this region where seismic concerns are minimal (compared to most of California) and wildfire risk does not seem so dramatic anymore either. However, Kim did point out to me and I will have to deal with it later, that there is at least one six-foot high cactus stalk that has gone from vertical to horizontal along the driveway. Cacti have very shallow roots, so when the ground gets too saturated and soft, they do tend to topple. Its not a tragedy, since this particular variety has just seeded itself in that spot and it will not be missed at all among all of the other succulents around it. But it does remind me that this hilltop is not completely immune to bad weather cycles.
The earth is a somewhat closed ecosystem with a unique and high preponderance of water as its base of life-sustaining qualities. We all understand the fundamental importance of water in our existence. We know we came from the water and that we are mostly made up of water, and that water is necessary to sustain life. We directly see plants live and die with and without water and have al been taught that hydrating keeps many maladies away. ANd while I am no meteorologist or historical climatologist, I do think that its fair to say that the earth has gone through many cycles and variations of weather patterns that have made some areas more waterborne than others. The great deserts of the Sahara, Gobi , Great Basin, Mojave, Arabian, Patagonian and Kalahari are areas that weren’t always so arid, but have become largely useless in sustaining life due to their lack of water. By contrast, the world’s tropical zones that all cluster around the equator that range across the Amazon, the Congo and the entire subcontinent and archipelago of Southeast Asia are areas that appear verdant but certainly do not make the sustenance of human life very easy.
That may actually be an unfair characterization of those regions. They all support human life in one way or another, its just that their harshness and extremes make it far less easy and far less prosperous an area to inhabit, so humans tend to gravitate to more temperate climes. actually, they tend to gravitate to the areas outside of what we call the tropical zones between the Tropic of Cancer (to the north) and the Tropic of Capricorn (to the south). This swath of 47 degrees of the earth’s middle girth is inhabited, but world progress has almost all entirely come from outside that region. That, of course, is very judgmental of me since I choose to define progress as modern technological progress and the concomitant economic development that comes with it.
I am sure that nature has imbedded in most of us the tendency to gravitate to areas where we can most easily prosper and I’m guessing that such areas get translated into areas where population congregates and thus, where we intuitively feel we are more likely to be able to pursue commercial activities. As we get closer to retirement, our inclinations logically change. We care less about commercial activity and, for the most part, prefer to stay in areas where commercial activity is limited to our own needs and not to what we think of as industrial commercial activity. That also coincides with better weather and more sun and, yes, you guessed it, less rain.
What do I want in a conducive retirement community? I want a pleasant spot that gives me pleasure when I look out the window. We have that is spades on this hilltop. As I’ve mentioned previously, in the distance we look at the ocean and the mountains, but up close we look at magnificent boulders that give us a primordial connection with the earth and succulents of every variety that give us a sense of the flourishing of life in its many forms. I want an area that is near services and normal commerce. I’m sure my requirements are lower than Kim’s in terms of shopping malls and such, but we both know we don’t want an area that is jammed with traffic and yet is still close enough to not make us feel desolate. And then there is weather. After a career lifetime spent in corporate offices or in commutation vehicles where the weather was largely irrelevant, my day is now very much governed by the weather. I know some people spend their working lives out in the elements, but I’m not so sure they don’t feel like I do that if they are now at leisure they ant the weather to be nice for them. And our definition of nice may vary a bit, but generally the Goldilocks median is that we want temperatures that are not too hot and not too cold.
Our friends Gary and Oswaldo seem to spend their lives in shorts and sneakers in a very wide range of temperatures (or at least wider than mine). But I think its fair that we all want temperatures between 68 and 82. Then we want moderate but not completely non-existent humidity. Either extreme feels sub-optimal. And finally, there is the issue of precipitation. I am going to ignore those who choose to retire in snow country, most often for the purpose of skiing of some sort. Other than those, we all want less rather than more rain in our lives. While growing up in the tropics, we got rain most every day for an hour in the afternoon and I suppose one can suffer that sort of rain pattern if one must, but mostly I want rain-free low to moderate humidity and if it must rain, a nighttime rain is best to keep the garden in full bloom. So, perhaps I need to revise my title to Rain, Rain Go Away, Come Again When I’m Asleep.