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| A wet Northumberland National Park, viewed from our house in Harbottle. |
I walked through the woods. Above, the high canopy drenched by September rain, below, little fell on me, though underfoot the soil quietly yielded to my step, a sensation I'd not experienced for many a month. These woods were redolent, an atomised perfume of emerald moss, of burnt sienna earth, of invisible mycelium. I wandered without purpose or direction until arrested in my reverie; there on the floor, glistening as if a shining beacon, a tree stump enveloped by coral fungus irradiating the most luxurious of orange in the half light.
That encounter was during an impromptu walk in East Harptree woods in the Mendip Hills in Somerset, having arranged to meet a friend for what was described as an amble with cake with a coffee. It has been so far well documented that 2026 has been the warmest, and possibly the driest, summer for decades. After over three months of dry weather here in the South West, the arrival of rain a few weeks ago was both unfamiliar and welcome. Soil remained iron-hard after those initial showers, but here, last weekend, high up on the Mendip ridge, after a few unsettled days, the soil was finally beginning to compress under my weight. Subtle, welcome and above all something to celebrate.
The change has been rapid. For months, I, along with most of the population of England and Wales, woke to strong sunlight, warm mornings, hot afternoons, nighttime too warm to sleep, with the prospect of the same tomorrow, the next day, and the next. And then, it rained. Referencing my diary, I noted 'It rained overnight. Don't get too excited as it was just enough to moisten a postage stamp.' It was the 18th of August. A few half-hearted showers followed over the following days, but persistent rain only began on August 27th. 'It poured overnight. That is the second night running that we have had heavy rain, yet by morning you'd be fooled into thinking no rain had fallen, save a tell-tale dampness on the lawn'. Therefore, walking woods in the Mendip's during the steady rain of Sunday, September 13th was a delicious novelty.
It was a meeting of literary minds which prompted me to mull over what rain actually means to me. I attended an Edward Thomas Fellowship walk two Sundays ago, bizarrely, in terms of my present thoughts, taking place on a gloriously warm and clear blue sky day. Thomas wrote a number of pieces about rain. One, simply titled Rain, poignantly contemplates mortality during WW1. However, in 1914 he wrote After Rain, recalling a sunrise illuminating a rain-drenched Hampshire hanger in winter; the poem begins,
The rain of a night and a day and a night
Stops at the light
Of this pale choked day. The peering sun
Sees what has been done.
I absolutely understand this sense of ending and beginning only too well. Love it or hate it, rain has that ability to reflect the mood, to enhance the scene. I've experienced that emotional uplift since childhood. There is often a clarity created over a landscape when rain finally ends and, if lucky, the sun emerges, a sentiment Thomas brings to the end of the poem:
And on each twig of every tree in the dell
Uncountable
Crystals both dark and bright of the the rain
That begins again.
For me, with the all too logical background of a science graduate, rainfall is merely the rules of chemistry. I know it is simply two chemicals combining to produce water, add a little meteorology, the evapotranspiration and the water cycle of schooldays, but then therein lies the unfathomable kaleidoscope of emotional connection which has captivated me since childhood. It is the sound above all else which I enjoy, or is it the sight? Samuel Taylor Coleridge captured what I am trying to say in one of his notebooks. On October 21st 1803 he wrote:
'Friday Morning. – A drisling Rain. Heavy masses of shapeless Vapour upon the mountains [O the perpetual Forms of Borrodale!] yet it is no unbroken Tale of dull Sadness... a gleam of softest light, that brought out the rich hues of the late Autumn… the Birds are singing in the tender Rain as if it were the Rain of April, & the decaying Foliage were Flowers & Blossoms.'
A Romantic Poet view of rain indeed. Yet, how many times have I myself observed 'Heavy masses of shapeless Vapour upon the mountains'. Living for over three decades in Somerset, mountains are distant, but still if I travel to an upland area I am transfixed by those scudding clouds which caress the tops, often travelling quickly uphill through a gulley propelled by up-draught air. Technically, this is known as orographic lift, the clouds forming when moist air rises and the dew point is reached. But emotionally, these are fascinating connections to nature.
I experienced this only a few days ago on the Quantock Hills. Walking steadily upwards from the lower slopes, the views towards Exmoor were far-reaching and spectacular. Before long, gossamer clouds began to chase my route. Long before reaching the trig-point at the summit, I'd entered thick cloud, visibility reduced to a mere metre or two, everything, including me, coated in a fine confetti of mist. Hundreds of cobweb hammocks, now visible, glistened amongst yellow gorse flowers, strange disconnected sounds reached me, a raven, a stonechat. Neither seen. A distant steam train whistle shrilled its passage. Everyday life below, I felt alone, abandoned, yet connected to this mass of vapour swirling quickly around me. Low cloud is, of course, not rain, not the rain we think of, the energy of condensation overruled by the pull of gravity.
Rain seemed to dominate my childhood. My mother bought a static caravan near Rothbury in Northumberland in 1971. Our very first night sleeping there was the eve of my seventh birthday, and we woke to rain. It rained a lot there. To this day, if I hear the percussion of rain on a metal roof, I'm instantly transported back to sleeping in our tin box. I was a self-contained only-child and allowed to free-roam the surrounding countryside. I would walk the banks of the river Coquet in all weathers, but it was the wet weather which excited my senses. Raindrops on grass could be flicked into the air as I passed. Few people ventured out during the rain, I was alone in nature, I was happy.
Much later, when at their lowest population ebb, I spent a couple of years surveying otter activity along the Coquet for the then Nature Conservancy Council. And, while I never saw the animal here, only signs (I had to travel to Skye for that), memorable days were spent watching wildlife, often at dawn and dusk, often in rain. Here, without realising, I absorbed the knowledge of the sound of rain. Heavy rain on a sycamore leaf has a sound altogether different to heavy rain on the water. Light rain dampens the soundscape. Rainfall, scurrying wind chased across the landscape, has a sound altogether different to incessant drisling, as Coleridge called it. Summer rain is different, often subtler and short-lived, to winter rain with its harsh symphony and darkening sky.
Summer rain can be cruel. At fifteen, I spent my six-week school summer holiday working on a hill farm near Glanton in Northumberland. I was due to move there as a student the following June. It was a wet year and, try as we might, the hay crop could not be brought in dry. I can still hear the sound of mini-waterfalls cascading from the broken gutters of the barns, down into pools of water below. Everywhere was wet, yet, in an odd way, I loved it, possibly as, at that age, this was simply one big adventurous step in my chosen career, and not the anguish of a farmer surveying a ruined hay crop. And still, nearly fifty years later, I enjoy rain.
Only this week, unable to sleep, did I sit in the conservatory at night listening to the sound made by rain falling in the garden. Hopefully, the hedgehog discovered that same day asleep in our compost heap, woke to rain and a smorgasbord of slugs that night.
I enjoy walking in it too. A few years ago, I took myself for a Sunday walk along a lane during heavy rain, well protected by my favourite Barbour coat and hat. A Land Rover pulled up, one of the local farmers offering me a lift to 'get out of this horrendous rain'. I declined his offer, stating I was enjoying the experience. I well remember his quizzical look as he closed the door and drove off into the murk. Penny for his thoughts?
But what of rainstorms? These high-energy fleeting moments of deluge are fascinating to watch, to experience, to read about. I've long admired Thomas Hardy. His description of the Wessex hinterland resonated with me as a teenager, and it has never left me. Hardy provided the perfect metaphor of the destructive powers of a summer storm in the heart of his heroine in his book Far From the Madding Crowd. Firstly, as steadfast unrequited Gabriel Oak noticed, a storm approached unprotected ricks during Bathsheba's wedding night. 'He was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the coach-house. It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this change in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain.' Oak having thus saved the harvest causes Bathsheba to reflect on her choice of husband. Later, that same husband, Sargent Troy, despairs over the destruction of his true-love, Fanny Robins' grave, by rainwater falling seventy feet from the church tower. 'The persistent torrent from the gurgoyle's jaws directed all its vengeance into the grave. The rich tawny mould was stirred into motion, and boiled like chocolate. The water accumulated and washed deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the night as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created by the deluging rain.'
Summer thunderstorms seem less present in Somerset than of late. I so enjoy that feeling of tempestuous wind, noticed by Gabriel Oak, which often chaotically precedes the deluge, which when it arrives can be deafening, and if falling on parched summer earth accompanied by a unique aroma I struggle to describe, earth mixed with the scent of new lain tarmacadam almost suffices. One of the people I met at the Edward Thomas walk was Roz Brady. I've been reading some of her exquisitely crafted nature writing on her website. She writes outdoors and beautifully describes in Pudsham Meadow through the Seasons – A Wild Writing year (1), a storm blowing over Widecombe... winnowing summer's growth and ushering in a landscape of winter.
All of which reminds me that while I have been writing this, I can hear steady rain falling once again. Writing about rain is one thing, but while it lasts, like Thomas, Hardy, Coleridge, Roz Brady, I need to get out there and experience... Rain!
(1) : Roz Brady website : www.rozbrady.com
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