Sun after Rain

It is November and this is the sixth day in a row that it has been raining.  A few bright leaves at T & S’s house, small scarlet pointed ones on the Japanese split leaf maple and large yellow heart shapes on the mulberry tree, are hanging on, but many of them are now plastered on the ground, and most of the other trees are bare.  The grass is brilliant green, made even more intense by an unremitting grey sky.  The Sackville River down by the Superstore turnoff is a raging torrent almost up to the bridge, and everything is soggy and sodden.

Sunday afternoon we had a small taste of the light that comes when the weather breaks.  It wasn’t actual sunlight, but you could see a patch of blue and where the sun was if it could just break through the edge of cloud.  It didn’t, and the cloud closed in for at least a couple more days, but it provided at least a promise of what might come (on Thursday, I think, if the forecast doesn’t change).

There is always something to love about sun after rain, so different from the white brightness of desert suns.  It always seems more golden and the blue of the sky always feels washed and fresh.  

I remember my first winter in Vancouver and my introduction to the day after day after day of rain, with no prospect of change.  It was oppressive, that low season, that November dark, but what sticks with me still were those instances toward sunset when the cloud would lift in the west to reveal just enough clear sky for the beneficent rays of sun to shine sideways across the city illuminating everything.  It was always an uplift, both emotionally and meteorologically, and always a wonder. 

After rain the wet surfaces reflect the brightness of the sky, and the remnants of grey cloud provide the kind of dense backdrop for the lit colours that photographers’ eyes (and ours) love.    

In this illuminated world objects seem to be emitting light and colour from within.

The other wonderful thing about the ending of the rain is the possibility of a rainbow, something that still astonishes me.  We have seen some wonderful ones from here arching over the harbour, but one (or two) of the most amazing happened last month as we were driving home from Bayers Lake.  It was late afternoon and the sun had started to drop when the sky opened up to the west.  We were just on the edge of the rain, and the most brilliant double rainbow shone beside and above us, with the near end following the bumper of the car in front of ours rather than pointing to a pot of gold.   

What I find consistently astonishing is the perfection of those curves in the sky and the brilliant delineation of colours, especially in the primary rainbow; I know I could look up the explanation of how the sunlight through the raindrops breaks up into the full spectrum of colour and forms a perfect arc, but I’d rather just see it happen and marvel at its magic.

The rain hasn’t stopped yet, but, according to that forecast, when it does the sun will shine quite a bit longer than it did in Ray Bradbury’s famous story, which we might honestly feel we are part of right now (check it out here if you’re not familiar with its poignancy).   On Thursday, if the forecast holds, I’ll be outside working in the sun and thinking of Bradbury’s  Margot and the tragedy of what she missed