Fire and Rain

With a nod to James Taylor, our long annual dry spell is finally over. It’s raining here in Socal, the first rain in six months. Hopefully this begins a four to six month pattern of cool days and sporadic rain, ending this year’s fire season.

Even after thirty years here it’s hard to get used to the compressed Socal seasons. There are only two seasons – a cool and mildly wet “winter” and a long, hot and dry “summer”. Spring and fall are conspicuously missing. I find that I like the winters here a lot and have come to hate the summers. Part of it is that I tolerate heat less and less in my dotage, making me wonder “why do older people move to Florida? Or Phoenix?”. The other part of it is that with summer comes the threat of Socal wildfires, a quite recent existential threat to those of us daring to live in areas with trees.

But I digress. With each first rain I feel a palpable sense of relief, a sense that everything is OK again. Six months without rain wears on me.

Postscript, 11/20: About 24 hours into our first “major” storm of the year we’ve gotten two tenths of an inch of rain. Color me unimpressed.

Postscript 2, 11/10: Ok, we got almost an inch of rain and some solid thunder and lightning this afternoon. I’m happy.

And just because I still love the song, here are JT’s immortal, poetic words from 1968 (!):

Fire and Rain
Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Susanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to
I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again
Won’t you look down upon me, jesus
You’ve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My body’s aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way
Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again
Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things
To come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground
Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you, baby, one more time again, now
Thought I’d see you one more time again
There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you fire and rain, now

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