Grey Rainy Days

I love grey rainy days... mostly because they were, more often than not, the only things I would see growing up. I grew up in the Willammette Valley of Western Oregon, a place that includes Eugene, Salem, and Portland. A place where the grass is, literally, always green (except for a few month in the summer) and forests are so thick you could hike all day long and never see the sky. It rains so much that I now joke that I was born with webbed feet and gills.

We moved to Idaho in 2004 and the year in general, and winters especially, became exponentially drier. I came to love the "dry heat" as it was much easier on my joints than the humidity. This winter, especially, up until lat week, had only had negligible precipitation, it was the absolute driest winter I had ever experienced in my 31 years of living.

And I hated it. It was too foreign. I know that many around here in the Treasure Valley (yes, we traded one valley for another) do not appreciate the rain, but I do. Rain is soothing. The grass turns a special shade of green when watered by the rain. Rain gives us all an excuse to stay inside, drink cocoa, and curl up on the couch with a movie or good book.

I know that many of my friends and family still in Salem, Turner, and elsewhere are experiencing too much rain. The campground where I spent most of my summers growing up has water waist-high in places. My uncle's car was parked in a low-land parking lot and was flooded up to the windows. The house we lived in for 18 years, which nearly flooded in 1996, is still situated between two creeks.

To them, I say: Send it all over here. At 2500 feet above sea level instead of under 500, and snow pack and reservoirs low for the lack of snow and rain, we have much less standing water than you.