…a pleasant memory.

I grew up fertilized by rain. Not rain so much, as in a downpour that strips the paint off your car, but as water wafting in the sky, and maybe falling from the sky. In Tacoma, there was always fog or mist or drizzle, and it fell everywhere at the same time from Redding to Vancouver. I’m in South Carolina where I loive now, and sometimes when I drive along a stretch of straight highway, I see a little dark puff ahead of me, like someone lit a pipe up high. It’s so tiny that I could stuff it in a sock. As I get closer, I see a line in the road where it’s dry on one side and wet on the other. Just past the line for maybe a hundred feet, the road is wet and gray. When the cool rain from this little puff of a cloud hits the baking hot black pavement, it flashes and rises in a mist, adding to the unbearable humidity. I’ve rode a bike through that mess before, and it’s no fun. If you think it’s hot out, that misty road is like a sauna. Just as quick as you see it, it’s behind you, and you’re in sunny South Carolina again, 90 degrees that feels like 105.