Rain...drops of water...precious element of the Universe...
Drink for a thirsty Earth...wet washed flowers, trees, bushes and grass, wet-mopped and wind-broomed paths and byways sparkling clean for another day to be recycled back again into the eternal web of life.
Each plant and animal takes from its environment the water it needs to live. The economy of living on this water planet is strongly sensed in this wilderness world of Appalachian Mountain Country where survival is balanced by the eternal cycle for life and death in eternal perpetuation.
From the tinkling
intensity of a raindrop; falling, gathering, running, streamlets growing into streams,
flowing submissively, bubbling, gurgling, skipping, sliding, laughing, responding to the
rhythms of day and night, thawing, freezing and thawing again, drop by drop, a million
drops flowing together into the sea to be transpired into the air as clouds to fall again
in summer showers.
Fields and meadows, the tree-covered land, birds and animals, even the tiniest of insects are thankful for the water...magic gift to all living things.
What wonderful tales a raindrop could tell, of places high up in the valley of fog, of cloudbows and rainbows, rainflakes and snowbows, of frost fairies and snowdrops and crystalline mornings, of colossal flashes of light that daylight the night and lightning-bolt polish the day, of clouds on parade in an array of feathers, wisps, puffs and plumes, of grassy-green fields decked out in prism lights, of sweet scents, as dewdrops cling to every twig tip and leaf blade, of the thunder's mighty boom and the soft sense of things as our world sparkles and tingles again and again and again.
To see a delicate spider's web stretching between the lower limb of a small evergreen to the grass on the ground beaded with drops of moisture, allows us to realize the tremendous energy of life within and without. Each strand could not make it alone. Each one is essential to the whole just as all life from we who people the earth to the tiniest of living things cannot make it alone.
The stream flows onward toward the sea through summer, autumn, winter and into another spring among these everlasting hills and valleys, tumbling wild and clear from a source we need to protect, preserve and conserve so that humankind too, is in balance with the web of life and knows the precious magic of raindrops.
Copyright © 1988, 1999 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published July 27, 1988 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.