Rain and I have a love/hate relationship

I think spring, not winter, is the hardest part about living in Montana.  

Winter is gorgeous, and after the end of a beautiful fall, it’s nice to look forward to a little white powder on the ground and the quiet it brings with it.

Spring is like a huge fake-out. It’s sunny and gorgeous, warm and green. You make plans for the day, whether it’s a hike in the woods or yard work, then those clouds roll in. Often they bring with them enough rain to ruin a day you thought could be paradise.

Sometimes it just hangs out in the clouds all day, threatening the world with water. Other times it rolls through with a little thunder and lightning. But on days like today (Monday) it hangs around like an unwanted guest. It makes my hands and feet cold. It chills me to the point where I can’t get warm.

As I walked out the door on the way to work this morning I think I groaned out loud when the first drop touched my exposed collar bone.

I actually like the rain. Or I guess I used to like the rain.

It was what winter was like in California. Cold and wet.

It would rain for days, it would soak you to the bone. It would muddy up our high school soccer fields. We would slide around, destroy the field, play something that did not look like soccer, and go home happy with stains on our white uniforms.

We would belly slide around on the field after the games and throw mud at each other. In the days between games, the school would bring in a machine that would roll the field back to something that looked flat and normal.

My parents would lay trash bags in the back of our suburban for my sister and I. My mom wouldn’t let us in the house until we took our soaked, stained, dripping uniforms off. And a hot shower would jolt our skin back to something that wasn’t numb.

The rain was something to look forward to.

Like when the rain comes in the late summer. It washes off the dust, quenches minimal thirst from the land and then leaves after 10 minutes.

There’s something so very Montana about summer rain.

When I lived in the Thompson River Valley west of Kalispell, we would watch it come up the valley in the late afternoon. You could see the black and gray it would soon bring to the ranches fields. It would come and go with the sun shining before and after, and lightning in between.

But after a winter of clouds and wet, like this one, I could live without the rain. The rain I get to coach a soccer practice in. The rain that destroys any hope of a sunny after work hike at Lone Pine or Heron Park with the dog. The rain that turns to snow and causes a spirit warmed by the sun to drop.

It seems relentless and makes me long for a summer filled with sun.

I suppose I should stop my whining though, because with the rain comes the green and the wildflowers. I saw my first shooting stars of the season two Sundays ago. I was hiking around Heron Park with the sun on my face.

There were only three little spots where their pink petals with yellow heads parted the green and brown grass. I’m sure the next time I pass the spot, because the sun follows the rain, there will be many more. Lady slippers and morel mushrooms will follow, hidden in tiny nooks between roots and rocks.

Sometimes it’s easy for me to forget that the snow melt swollen Flathead River is a sign that I will soon be able to head to my favorite spots in the mountains and camp without snow on the ground. I shouldn’t complain because the green that comes with the spring rain will be gone quickly with the warmth of a summer sun and the wildflowers my eyes yearn for will disappear into July.