Random Thoughts on Rain

The rain comes in sheets now more often than it did before.  Sometimes warm.  Sometimes cold. 

Sometimes it washes away the heaviness that's fallen on the city, and sometimes the drops are just nails holding it in place. 

I've always wondered how much water the lake can hold until it begins to behave like the ocean.  I always smiled smugly to think that living a quarter mile away from the lake I was safe from any fury because it's not the ocean.  Now I'm not so sure.  Long familiar landmarks are gone now, swallowed by the great freshwater sea. 

The concept of water is so infuriating.  Too much water and we're under flood warnings.  Too little and it's a drought.  The line is so thin too.  If it rains for eight weeks and then doesn't for the next eight, that doesn't mean we've hit equilibrium.  It means we've suffered through a deluge and a drought. 

But, at least here, far inland, the lake will hold through such phenomena.  And that's what scares me.  Humans are great at taking everything for granted until they can't anymore. One quadrillion gallons of water (1 with 15 zeros) and it can probably vanish in an instant when we get too greedy.  Maybe two quadrillion if nature gets angry enough at us and shows us what it's capable of.

I'll probably sleep well tonight listening to the plink, plink on the roof.  But not too well.