When I learned California now faces a record third year of drought and that water rationing may be in the pipeline, my first thought was, “That’s a shame.”
My second thought: “Good day, sunshine!”
I hate rain. Always have. Give me blue skies. Give me brown skies. Even gray skies are OK, as long as they stay high and dry.
Growing up in L.A., nothing made me happier than hearing the tanned TV weatherman say, “A ridge of high pressure is parked over the Southland. Folks, it’s gonna be a scorcher.”
Moving up here to the rain belt a few years ago came as a shock. Every day, especially that first winter, it seemed raindrops kept falling on my head. I soon wore out several umbrellas, whereas my one umbrella in L.A. had served me well since the Carter administration.
Up here, I squished when I walked.
One time, I exited a BART train for a short stroll home, umbrella at the ready. From the open-air platform, a gale-force wind blew the torrent sideways, soaking me through in seconds. I hadn’t even made it to the escalator.
Eventually, I grew accustomed to the Northern California rain, and even started liking the sound of it on the roof, with its attending curl-up-on-the-sofa-with-a-mug-of-hot-cocoa mood.
I have never lost my preference for dry weather, but as this drought worsens and as scientists’ dire predictions of climate change appear to be coming true, I have begun rethinking the whole “I hate rain” thing.
Jews have been there and done that. Having emerged out of a desert culture, Jewish tradition acknowledges the precious nature of water.
An entire chapter of the Talmud, in Tractate Ta’anit, covers the laws governing the prayer for rain. Not whether to pray for it — that’s a given — but when and how often.
In that tractate, Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi said the world is watered with the residue remaining from when the Garden of Eden was first watered.
And Rabbi Yochanan said there are but three keys in the hands of God: the key of childbirth; the key to the revival of the dead; and the key of rain.
Clearly rain was a matter of life and death to the sages.
Rain, and the consequent abundance of fresh clean water, is something we Californians take for granted. As Psalm 121 advises, we have lifted our eyes to the hills — the Sierra Nevada range and its snowpack, to be precise, from whence come our car washes and Raging Waters theme parks.
If this present drought is not just part of a normal cycle but a harbinger of climate change, then our California eden is in trouble. Throughout human history, drought has destroyed empires. Our civilization — founded on cheap and plentiful water — could likewise shrivel and fade while the lone and level sands stretch far away. Taking three-minute showers won’t fix it.
It all serves to take me out of my own puny lifetime and see the bigger picture.
As children we don’t imagine a world before we came along. As adults we resist imagining a world after we die. How could life possibly carry on without us?
Oh, but it will. And what have we done to preserve all that God has given us and all that we must bequeath to our children? Besides putting the sprinkler system on a timer, clearly not enough.
I don’t know if we will avert eco-disaster, or whether it’s too late. I do know, as sunny days dawn in endless succession, as the reservoirs drain and the hills brown, I find myself for the first time watching the skies and hoping to detect the smell of an approaching storm.
The poets always say it better than I possibly can. This is a verse from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
“With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow, and with my own hand labour’d it to grow: And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d — ‘I came like Water and like Wind I go.’”
Dan Pine can be reached at [email protected].