Rain, Snow And Earthquakes

It rained a while back. California has been suffering through several years of drought, so I should have been happy, but I was not. The rain lashing against my windows and the gray skies outside, and the colder weather from the storm all combined to make me feel frightened, confused, and isolated.

I know intellectually that we need the rain, but emotionally it was like a visceral shock to my system, because it has been so long. Besides, because of the drought, and many subsequent forest fires that burned up thousands of acres of vegetation, we are in for many mudslides this year. Forest fire season is now seemingly year-round in California. So we definitely need more rain.

I guess it was like the change in the weather that affected me so profoundly, like that timeless classic song by Natalie Merchant with 10,000 Maniacs, “About the Weather.”

I think that there is something inherently embedded deep in the human consciousness that always wants to resist change, even if the change is for the better. Do you feel that way too? Do you have a built-in resistance to change, or do you embrace it?

You can know this intellectually, just like I realize that California desperately needs the rain, but there is still a small part of me resisting the change on the gut level. It is just the change itself, in the moment, that affects me so profoundly.

Things are different when it rains, and I don’t like it! But like everybody else, I just have to soldier on and deal with the weather. Since I grew up in Chicago I certainly know that a little or even a lot of rain is nothing compared to the weather they get back there all winter long.

I clearly remember mountainous snowdrifts, and icy roads that had to be snowplowed and then salted by special trucks to make the streets passable, and I most certainly remember having to shovel snow every day of the winter.

It is the law back there that every homeowner, store owner, or apartment manager is responsible for shoveling the snow off the sidewalks when it snows. Of course, if you have a house, you have to shovel not only your sidewalk but the driveway just to be able to get your car out of the garage as well.

And if you just concluded a backbreaking hour or so shoveling all this snow, don’t be surprised if this is just the exact instant that the snow plow will go by your house and dump a new load of snow at your driveway entrance!

So once again you have to grab your shovel and go and shovel this new mound of excess snow away to get your car out of the driveway before you hit the icy streets. Hopefully, they will have been snowplowed and salted to melt the ice enough to enable you to make your morning commute to work or school, or just to do necessary shopping. It’s quite the wake-up call.

I remember as kids whenever there was a large snowstorm overnight we would gather around the radio or tv with bated breath hoping to hear that our particular school was closed for the day due to the extremely inclement weather.

This happened infrequently, but there were always a few days every winter where the snow, cold, and ice were so great certain school districts would be forced to close because the storm was so severe. The roads were impassable for the school buses and the teachers to physically get to the school.

Of course, as kids faced with this kind of severe snowstorm, ice, and cold, our immediate reaction was Oh Yeah! We were so giddy and happy and joyous at not having to go to school we immediately bundled up and raced outside to play in the snow all day!

Living in San Francisco, which is a very temperate area, we never get snow, and as an adult, I don’t miss it, but in a way, I feel sorry for the kids here never getting to have the fun of building snow forts, having snowball fights, and sledding and ice skating.

We do have ice skating rinks here in San Francisco, but they are few and far between and almost all indoor rinks, like at shopping malls. The city provides an outdoor skating rink downtown outside the Embarcadero Buildings downtown around wintertime, but they are only there for a few weeks.

At least the kids, if their parents take them, can get the experience of skating outdoors though, and without the bitter biting cold of the Midwest and most of the rest of the country.

I realize now how much the weather influences the daily activities, thought processes, and mindset of the majority of the country to a much greater extent than I ever did as a kid. As a kid, you just grow up with that kind of weather and are totally able to adapt to it, you think nothing of it, it is just the way it is. You just think it’s like that everywhere.

As an adult, I realized there are choices to be made about the weather, and that you can move to places like California or Florida to avoid the snow year-round. When I was a kid I did not ever even realize there was an option.

Most of my family, including my mother, sister, and her family still live in the Midwest and put up with all this snow every winter. When I press them about why, they always say they enjoy the variety of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter, and that the winter cold makes them appreciate the warmer weather the rest of the year.

They also think I am crazy for living in earthquake country, and fear that all of California will one day be hit by a massive killer quake and fall off into the ocean, like Atlantis! We are actually in more danger of mudslides, especially in Southern California.

Since I have lived in San Francisco for most of my adult life now, I can say that has not happened yet and that most Californians consider it a highly unlikely prospect. Oh sure, we have had a few large earthquakes here, but the thing about earthquakes is they are over quick, fast, and in a hurry.

In other words, by the time you realize you are having one, it is already almost over, because most jolts don’t last for more than a few seconds. An earthquake lasting a full minute would be very scary, and I went through one of those once. It was sort of a rolling, sickening feeling and more like a succession of quakes one after the other, like the quake we had in 1989.

Don’t get me wrong, earthquakes are terrifying while they are happening. Time slows down and seconds can seem like hours. But the fact is, they just don’t happen that often to live in constant fear of them. I know many of my friends from back East are terrified of earthquakes, but again, they are relatively rare.

So I will take my risks with the earthquakes, but I still feel threatened and even intimidated by driving around in the rain. The people in SF drive like maniacs in the rain, like they never heard of hydroplaning. That is when there is so much water hitting the freeway your tires lose contact with the road, and you have no traction and can easily go into a potentially deadly skid.

A big part of me will always be grateful for the huge difference our moderate weather in SF and California in general means to us on a daily basis and how it is reflected in our mindsets and worldview. Especially compared to my relatives and the great majority of the country who are buried under Arctic blasts of snow and ice every winter season, and take it all in stride.

But every part of the country has its own unique and sometimes treacherous weather patterns. So it’s like just pick your poison, rain and mudslides and flooding and the occasional earthquakes on the West coast.

Or snow and ice and freezing cold weather every single winter everywhere else but California or Florida. Nobody is totally immune from the weather, and it molds and shapes our daily lives in every way. It’s all just part of Nature’s plan, the grand scheme of things, and we as humans just have to learn to adapt.

I guess that old saying is really true, “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.”