On rain, and what it started to mean for me this year.
I took the dog on a rainy walk and then rain offered something I least expected.
I’ve just returned home from a walk with the dog, a wet walk, and it’s likely been one of the best walks I had in a while.
After a very wet past year and a winter filled with persistent rain, day after day, it simply stopped somewhere in February. What at first seemed like a great emergence of spring, longed for, wished for, bringing some hope, slowly turned into a worrying state. When will it rain again?
In March, we’ve had a total of 2 mm of rain. In a rural village like mine, where most homes belong to farmers, it’s been part of every small talk, every conversation. Everyone would shrug one’s shoulders, look at the sky and sigh, while remembering those dry years some time ago, where it stopped raining in May and didn’t start again until the end of September. What if, this time, it just stopped in February?
Meanwhile, the winter had also been tough for me in other terms: My boss had struggled with cancer the past year and while we all thought it was finally gone by autumn, the doctors found some metastases just before Christmas. One and a half months later, we all learned that she would never be able to fight it, that she would die soon, that she won’t be able to return into her bookstore, as her health was quickly declining. Then, it stopped raining.
When spring came, I started to grow more flower seeds on my windowsills than I had space on my balcony. I made space for them in my horse’s paddock instead. At the same time, I was working tirelessly – at work, in the café, and for my small business at home. Though I struggled to get things done properly and within the deadlines I had put up for myself back in January, I still found things to do. To just not think too much about my boss’ death, about her pain, and about what no rain will mean for my horses and their food.
Rain stopped to exist outside of the weather app, showing it somewhere on the Atlantic or elsewhere. The sun in March and the warm temperatures at first helped me a lot mentally, until they didn’t anymore. It was just too much sun. Too much of a bright sky. Too much of dry soil. Too much waiting for the first green leaves, who wouldn’t appear without water. And unnoticed: Too much to carry.
Rain suddenly became wished for. Not an annoying state that would slow life down, in a negative way. That would leave you and everything else in a wet state. Wringing off towels used to dry the dog, shoes that would leak, jackets that I had to realise were too old for this weather. No. It was wished for: the smell of wet soil, wet streets, wet forests. Seeing greenery, dripping leaves in the forest, the sound of raindrops, the way a wet and rainy landscape looks like. I wished for slow days. Rain gives you a very pleasing external validation to stay indoors and be lazy. Without it, there was no such excuse to just stay inside and do nothing throughout the day.
Today, rain gave me the permission to have a slow Sunday. To bake a bit, to doodle a bit, to sit here just right now and write after a walk in the rain. I’m looking outdoors and it looks like I’m living in a rainforest documentary. Everything is green and it’s just pouring down since the early morning. I can hear the rain, flying through the air, hitting the ground, dripping down the roof.
Back in early spring, when I was longing for rain, without yet realising that I needed it, it started to rain again when my boss died. I don’t exactly remember if it rained the day she died or that day afterwards. But it rained. For several days, after eight weeks of no rain. Not much, but a bit at least. And it brought relieve, as we had all been living with the underlying awareness and stress of a soon-to-happen-death. Back then, I was sometimes afraid one of my colleagues would send me a message or call me with the foreseeable news. It felt like the sky was crying that day. In addition, it brought green leaves and spring flowers.
I broke down two days later, from all the weight that had been on my shoulders for months. Sadness was there with me but also relieve. It rained. I was so tired. But there was hope.
Since then, busy weeks and weekends filled my calendar, and I was hardly able to work for myself properly. Rain disappeared as quickly as it had come back. Either I had no time to work, or no energy left. I felt inspired, called to paint again, but dreaded the easel, the effort, motivation, dedication and energy that I would need to summon, to sit down and paint. So, I didn’t. Sometimes I found other tasks to do, sometimes I didn’t and then I would just turn to my balcony, my seedlings, to the patch of dry, bare earth that I called my tiny garden.
Weekends were filled with events or being-away-from-home. Even a small holiday felt more like a to-do, an event in my calendar. Something that needed to be done and ticked off. Though when I was looking at the ocean, for the first time in weeks, I truly started to feel more relaxed, like I was becoming myself again. An ocean full of water is always good for my soul, and this time, evening beach walks led to a return of energy and motivation. At least a bit.
Yet again, I was looking back at another round of weeks without rain. Maybe now the April rain had been the last time, the last drops of water for the summer?
Then, this weekend came, and I was dreading it like many of the other weekends since March. This time the to-do said: Take care of the dog, mum is on holiday. Unexpectedly, it turned into the most relaxing and vitalising weekend I had in a long while. Rain returned, with fresh winds from the west, clearing the air from the drought, pollen and dust of the past weeks, pushing away the eastern winds. Western winds always give my home a coastal feel, though the coast is 300 km away. But somehow it feels different, almost as if you could notice the North Sea, the English Channel, or even the Atlantic. Ocean droplets arriving as clouds with the wind. It has a different energy than winds from the east or south.
Anyway, there was my slow Sunday. Me, the dog and raspberry-cinnamon buns in the making. And a long walk through the rain, which not only washed away the pollen and dust, but also the worries, the leftover sadness, the stress, the busyness, the constant working-on-anything. Rain came when I needed it; heavily and steadily it brought wetness back to the soil, vitalising nature.
When I was younger, I always hated to go on a hack with my horse when it was raining, because I hate getting wet. But as soon as your outside, in the middle of it, blending in, it’s not that bothering anymore. It’s even fun and makes you feel alive in a way that only heavy rainfall brings along with it.
So, lately, rain became a relieve, not a dreaded condition that makes life harder, that demands jackets and covers. It means slowing down and letting go, it vitalises and replenishes. It holds space for emotions; it helps to carry emotions. Today, it carried me through another weekend that seemed more like an elongated to-do, taking it and replacing it with moments of to-be’s.
The rain was knocking on my umbrella, above my head. My feet striking forward in a continuous rhythm, water splashing around them, disappearing into the ground. A happy wet dog next to me. Just us and nature as it is. Being. No busyness, no death, no mourning, no stress, no feeling of having lost the energy. Rain carried it all, took it, gave permission to just be.
Without doubt, it will rain again one day. That’s for sure.
About me: Hello, I’m Mareike, the writer of this newsletter hills to heart. Besides being a writer I’m also a painter, creating landscape and floral works with (mainly) oil paints. I share about my paintings on my website and also have a dedicated blog, which you are welcome to explore. Feel free to leave a heart, comment or share my writings.
I'm so sorry for your loss! And thank you for making rain feel appealing.