I remember tracing
Across the pale silvery worlds
Of sharpened sounds
Lit by January moons.
.
Curse you,
Impatient rain,
And how you fidget!
.
Casting this land
Into a great serpentine lapse,
Of water and light
With everything sparkling
On a mid-winter’s night.
Wild, curly haired kids still chase candy-colored rocks
Across old sea floors, dotted with dandelions,
And the long yawn of summer gone stale,
All gathered up, into a lone rusty pail.
.
This,
After swings in trees,
and secret swimming holes,
down long, easy roads,
Soothed in watermelon dreams,
While holding hands, with our heads in circles, catching the sky.
Her eyes, sparkling stars of night and oceans blue,
Whisper ice cream cones and a first kiss, too.
.
Now, sun in smoke, searing
Cicadas singing,
That long dusty road of angst and dearth
All dried and sharp,
Our once cherished mirth.
.
Hurry!
Bring us giddy hopes of weather and water,
and grand tales on the coming of storms,
Let times soon turn, and days delite
Those same stories,
Sparkling in that honey-colored light.
In other years,
Those times, now hastily sealed in envelopes,
Memories of those days of rain:
An incessant November after a scorched Halloween,
Or cold February rain, broken by snow,
Gusting loud and clear that afternoon,
In another damp celebration,
To the beat of scowling wind and staccato raindrops.
.
Winter’s pulse traced across every window.
.
Then, rivers of emerald velvet,
Concealing cobbled dreams,
The electricity of fish,
And the hard lines of trees
Against soft winter skies.
.
We dreamed of things outside us.
.
Now, we wake in the crisp, tingling night
Like the sound of a pin snapping,
Where it lingers on the cold edge of dawn
And stretches under the long fetch of winter sun.
.
Summer’s long pause distilled and bare.
.
These days trudge on,
Held fast under shadowy chill
Where summer escaped,
As we wonder if it ever left.
.
We will remember this time.
Away from the coast, for several days in June,
Where the river bends broad and wide, Spring holds on,
Giving way to an old vibrancy still lingering in the valley.
A chance morning rain: warm, brief, light as a whisper,
Sharpening the songs of birds and painting the last flowers across fields
Between dwellings added on to over the years.
The kinds of homes that either gather character, or become ramshackle.
If you are not careful, this seems like the way it always should be.
.
Look across the green fields, and see an old tractor here and over there,
Now rusted fossils of moving days, times of hard work,
And lazy Sunday afternoons, when kids would skip stones across the river.
.
A metal-sided shop, banged, dented and dulled,
Held fast by the thorns of blackberry vines,
Now only kept clear near a single door:
An oil stained opening to more rust, stories and passed toils.
Somewhere, in there, sometime, things just stopped.
But the smell of grease still lingers, over the tinge of mice and cobweb.
.
You don’t have to be careful in August, days of relentless sun and heat:
Wilting everything into tangled, thorny masses
Covering once proud fences, and clutching old projects
Long enough for them to wither of procrastination on hot, windless afternoons,
When soil bakes into hard, aching sticker-ridden swaths,
And old metal sorely creaks and groans,
Thirsting for the first cheating rain of late September.
.
If you are not careful, and forget this time,
When the soul of this place was able to pause
And exhale the long breath of relief,
you will be swallowed whole in this empty celebration.
It snuck in on a quiet night
Absent any breeze
Foreshadowing the next rain
And we missed it.
.
It came back later that week,
Riding a northwest wind fierce
Fading in the afternoon
It tickled us through the night.
.
Over the hill and through the prairies
It comes on strong, somehow appearing
Then we drop our gaze for a moment
And get lost again in winter’s lingering hold.
Perhaps the ingredients are falling into place for an extended wet period. A developing low south of the parent aleutian low, a relaxing of the downstream ridge over the continental US, high pressure over Kamchatka and the push of mid-latitude storms helped by warmer than average sea temperatures. We can hope. 
By my reckoning, we sit almost smack dab in the middle of Autumn, 2009. By the calendar’s telling, it began on September 21 and ends on December 21. Tonite, the moon wanes a week from full and pokes through showery clouds. The storm wet us down last night enough to raise the northern rivers a bit, but nothing of any appreciable runoff. Maybe in a utopian climate, fall would steadily evolve from summer’s drizzle into warm, light rains punctuated with the occasional heavier shower at night. These would be the Chinook rains where the rivers would raise slightly, allowing early fish to enter the coastal rivers. The rains would continue on and off, in a gentle, easy fashion, and we would say this is fall, regardless of the day or week or month; the time of passing rains. Chinook would find the lower rivers fresh and dependable generation after generation. Heavier rains would kick in around Thanksgiving and an early winter would set in. By Christmas, the rivers would all be swollen and open to the wanderings of steelhead and winter Chinook for several months. But it’s too easy to describe the ideal and, rather, fall seems to be a time of change with persistent bouts of summer hanging on and weather that remains uncommitted, or hesitant, maybe.
I am always intrigued by some of the reports from the early 1900s of fishable runs of Eel River fish showing in late August. Did the rains start earlier back then? Did the greater abundance of fish back then simply give way to earlier fish? In the 1930s, for example, Clark van Fleet wrote of fishing steelhead on the lower Eel in September following freshets that raise the river a bit – something almost unheard of these days. Newspaper reports hint at fishing for Chinook at the Van Duzen confluence in late August. Certainly, less aggraded rivers back then would likely have meant more surface water available in late summer, so maybe rainfall was not as essential for early fish as it is today. Still, though, the thought of rains routinely setting in during September on the coast is almost deliteful, if not disturbing to know those times have passed.
Now, here in early November, we can sit on the porch listening to the light shower dance down on the roof and dream of rivers and fish while the full moon lights a canvas of broken clouds. We can dream of those years when the rains come gentle and easy, guiding our way through a season like so many before. Instead we are left to guess and hope. Then again, maybe this is the essence of fall; a time of hope mixed with the turmoils of change. The frustrating part is that I could have told you September 21st was just as much Autumnal as is today. Interesting to note that December 21 marks the date of some of the more significant storms to pummel the north coast since records began. But even then, on the shortest day of the year, Autumn is everywhere. Then again, I could find you a Chinook in that same river, September, October, November or December. And they know, despite their chances early or late, that they will get it right. Now, relieve me of the bondage of this absurb notion of time so that I might better know the essence of this season.
From across the room, the sound comes though the door, along the face of the window and down from the ceiling. Rain sings along the street out front. The calla lilies out front fill with the water beading up along their silky white bloom. Across the hills, tendrils of fog waft upward from the forest in a great cycle of the water returning skyward. Today, this place is painted all green and grey – spring on hold while winter reaches out once more to soothe us maybe one last time before it all goes away into summer.
The oak woodlands are bright green with the beginnings of wildflower carpets across the sunlit hillsides. Along the river, the purple lupine and golden poppies celebrate the new sun. This could be the quintessential spring scene except for one thing: the wind. I saw the warnings – gusts up to 40 mph – on the heels of the storm passing to the east. Wind that’s in a hurry to race in a big counter-clockwise arc to fuel a storm over the Rockies. All the little places where I might find a little respite are even more trouble as the wind eddies and swirls unpredictably in the lee of the bankside trees.
On the water, the mayflies and caddis come off in good numbers. But the winged adults skitter along the water too quickly to offer easy pickin’s for the trout below. Swallows maneuver across the water, handling the wind with ease, grabbing up the bugs. Not a single trout can be seen on the surface. There’s no need, they can simply grab the bugs ascending in the water column and forgo the unpredictable surface fare. Normally, this would be an afternoon of steady surface-feeding fish. But not today. A few productive reaches are visited – all with the same wind-whipped setting. Instead, I take the time to explore two potential new sites. Good water to be had. But it will have to wait until another time. I’ll be here all week – and hopefully have a chance at a classic spring day drifting dry flies for large, surface feeding trout.
The best way to see Spring here in town is on a bike. The last few days of March still might bite with a hint of winter, but the sun shines higher now and a familiar time is once again at hand. These early days are as much about the hope of Spring as they are about the actual time of year. From the bike, riding along with a brisk breeze, you can see how the grass has sprung up overnight. Here the smell of green and growth ripens in the afternoon warmth and rides along the afternoon wind. There’s something about the light and air and smell. Something has changed.
I don’t know if Spring is actually a season here or just a subtle transition to summer. Everything is now linked to summer. That green grass getting taller and slowly drying into July and August seems more pertinent than a breezy Thursday afternoon in late March. So this is more about feeling and remembering more than seeing. Bike rides tend to do that.
Turning on to K street I remember those early days here, wondering what it would be like. Now I know. Now I know what to look forward to. Now I know what to look for. Someday down the line, some morning, the hermit thrush will be singing outside the window, the fields will be full of daisy, and the season will have played over and over again, day-after-day. Summer will be real. Late March on the coast is a time a change and everything seems to look forward now.
Shaken Rain 