The Peace of Rain

And walls were waterfalls. A man

Crawled on a landscape that spread round

Its fading distances and where
Rock masked with water was the ground

 

Norman MacCaig, from ‘Walking in a Rainstorm’

 

Summer again. Everything so green in the forest, so full of life and living. White flecks of cuckoo spit among the heather stalks, spotted heath orchids blooming white among vividly purple clumps of bell heather, and pink cross leaved heath. And through it all the grey streaks of the rain. Falling fast; falling slow. Times for heavy rain and times for gentle. A corrugated iron sky and a smirr of skin-kissing mizzle.

I adore the rain. In truth, I am more fond of it than a day of blazing sunshine, for a rainy day in the forest is more interesting than a day of constant light. Rain brings a little mystery to things. If the forest is a stage then the rain is its director – ushering the characters into and out of sight.

 

⁣I love the peace of the rain. I love the way that quietness steals through the forest as it comes on, and the clouds roll down the mountain slopes and hide the hills away behind a grey curtain, revealing as much as they conceal. On a clear day you look at the whole view. On a rainy day, you notice the details closer to you. The layering of the ranks of trees in the forest – each dark band with a lighter shade just above it, fading away. You do not see this in the sunshine.

 

I love the way it keeps most people indoors and lets me have the quiet woods to myself, and how it moistens the soil and makes animal tracks easy to find. I love the way the earth oozes under my feet, lush and pungent with the smell of the forest. I love the way it trickles down branches and onto pine needles before falling. Most of all I love the pitter-patter of water falling on the surface of the loch, dappling the water and sparkling like the twinkling of stars. Rings spreading out from each singularity, merging through each other before being soaked up again by the water.

 

I became completely fascinated by watching rain, and by water in general. I went daily to a small loch, to sit for an hour and watch the water. Often our dog, Scout, came along too for his daily swim, and over and over I would lob the ball as far into the loch as I could for him to fetch. Waiting, waiting, waiting…smack! The ball hits the silver water, an explosion of black innards erupts from the surface, settles… and is smoothed over. The water heals itself, a circle of rings spreads out around the vanishing wound in the surface, until Scout would pierce this like the head of an arrow trailing a V shaped wake. Always a perfect bullseye, snatching the ball from the heart of new stillness.

As he swam back to shore, snorting and grunting and chasing after bubbles, I would sit on a rock and watch the flow of light on the waves he created. The infinite colour held in the ripples, glimmering and vanishing endlessly. The never-ending change of tone, shade and light in the water, different from day to day and often from minute to minute. The water of the loch reminded me of the sky in winter.

Bit by bit, the water of the loch crept higher each day. It had been famously low for months, but seemed to have found new life and was gradually refilling itself in the summer rains. My sitting place on the shore gradually moved back and back. I watched the water rise on a conspicuous rock where each day a carrot faced Oyster Catcher stood, until the day the water was lapping at its feet. Stubbornly it stayed put, perching there every morning until finally the rock was covered, and it moved somewhere else.

 

Sometimes I went without the dog, and on these days without the explosive enthusiasm and rush of canine energy I followed quite different rituals of habit. Instead of charging to the loch I would always tread as softly as I could, fox walking between the birch and aspen trees and listening as I went. As the water came into sight I would stop to observe it and see what sort of day we had today. Would it be flat, grey and opaque, or silver slick with reflection? Rising into vapour or bubbling with rainfall? Often the sheet of water was the indicator of rain long before I felt it myself.

One afternoon I went down to the water, the smell of rain strong in my nostrils and a sense of energy in the air. A huge thunderstorm was sweeping northwards across the Cairngorms, releasing rumbles of thunder that fell onto the loch with a crash and echoed around the wooded shores. I was excited – nothing is so energising as a thunderstorm.

 

I took my place beside the water, waiting. The surface of the loch was as grey and smooth as stainless steel – totally opaque, speckled with rain spots like static. The pine trees across the loch were dark. The thunder came every few minutes, rolling on and on and on. Deep, resonant rumbling like boulders crashing down a mountain.

My eyes caught twin flashes of forked lightning to the north, and I counted until the thunder struck. Twelve seconds. It was a good way off. But the rain intensified. The trees faded away behind a grey curtain and the sound of water rose in a hiss at the edge of my hearing. The rain became heavier still, and the hissing sound was lost in the din as the loch churned in a million tiny bubbling, boiling explosions, punctuated by the crack of thunder and flashes of lightning on the horizon. Every raindrop struck with such force that a pea size droplet leapt back up, blending the division between water and air. It danced furiously. Drops of rain gathered at the rim of my hat, ran sideways along it and then fell in a growing fountain.

Any creature with sense was taking shelter. The air carried no sound of birds – only the wild screaming hiss of legato rain, punctuated by the bass percussion of thundercracks. I was lost in it, helplessly wonder-struck by every dancing molecule of atmosphere and water. I wanted to laugh and to cry. I felt immense love for the wildness of the storm, the lashing of the water and the heavy streaks of rain. I felt the same way as I do when I listen to great music. Caught up in its energy, surfing high on a combination of awe and euphoria – desperate for every next beat but never wanting it to end.

But, inevitably, it did end. Neither suddenly nor sharply the storm kept moving north, drifting along on its cushion of rain, leaving the surface of the loch and the forest with no sign at all that it had ever been. But I felt the mark it had left in me.

The next day I went back again, to look at the loch some more and to be fascinated by just how different it always was to itself. In a few minutes the loch could change from being as clear as glass to opaque and dark as smoke. Speckled by rain that was hardly rain at all – just a pilgrim drop or two in the air. Today the loch did not boil and lash under the power of a storm but seemed playful, the water in just enough motion so that it was not exactly still. Riffles like filaments of silvery spider silk stretched out across the smoothness, the wind twitching and plucking chords on white harpstrings. It was as if a lazy goddess, slightly bored, lay on a couch of air and traced idle fingers through the water. The water danced where her fingers touched, silver and bright, rippled ever so gently and swirling in a spiral around and through the smooth undisturbed patches, slick and as dark as ebony. Gentle Lady Breeze laid a hand into the water, pressing just lightly enough to turn that sharp, cold mirror into a flowing sheet of radiant silk. With infinite tenderness, the sky merged into its reflected self, like the matching of the world to my human heart. 

 

I felt an urge to swim. It wasn’t a choice really – I simply had to. I pulled off everything but my shorts and waded in, delicately and awkwardly, cold water inching up the skin of my peely wally legs while I tried to pick a way down through sharp and slippy rocks. Then with a shuddering gasp I took the plunge and the loch folded itself over my shoulders and held me in a cold and painful embrace. 

 

The cold was compelling, impossible to ignore. Absolute gasping sensation, until gradually my body adjusted. My skin felt cool instead of cold and my breath came easier. I started to notice other things besides the sensation of the water, such as the swirling plant and mud matter I had disturbed, twirling in turbid clouds around my pale limbs, fading into the depths of the loch. I saw the tiny liquid details – how the water took on the texture of leather as lush summer air breathed on it. I saw how it flowed over my hands as I struck out from the shore, and how the light danced on the water even if the day was cloudy. Every half movement of air, light and body caused the water to change. It was constantly reactive to the movement of the world around itself – a mirror of everything that lived.

 

To my front, the trees of the far bank stood upside down in the water in a black and blurry stripe, streaked with a scarf of silver thread. I swam to it, looked back and saw it had moved. The dark stripe now lay behind. I swam back, then gave up the chase. My skin was tingling as I wobbled up the slippy rocks, with all the elegance of a drunken walrus coming ashore, but feeling just as merry.

 

My fascination with the water only got deeper as time went by, and I found myself again and again sitting beside the loch watching it with the attention of a collie watching a rabbit hole. By habit I always chose the same rock to sit on, and I spent so much time there that I gradually wore two footprints into the soil.

When the air blows gently on the water in just the right way it takes on a form unlike anything else, and holds my gaze in a state of enthrallment. It is almost mystical in its ineffability. If the air is still then the water balances the world in perfect reflection. If the air blows too strongly then the water becomes smokey and opaque, no longer holding the light. But there is a just-right amount, where it is captured half between motion and stillness – in flow. A surface of tiny undulations that have not lost their fluid smoothness. A wave of exactly the right properties will ripple and flash, ellipses of colour and light expanding and vanishing, pulsing toward me in the wind. I move closer and closer to it in raptured examination until my eye is almost at the meniscus. My gaze unlocks from the water itself and takes hold of the motion, sees how they tease and pull apart the colours of the clouds above, and mixes them into one another. It is a silken silver palette. The co-mingling of light and shadow that never quite touch.

Eventually the time to turn for home always comes around. I clamber back over the gate and make my way back up into the birch woods. The sun is out on the freshly fallen rain, and the woods are sparkling. Bracken fronds and birch twigs point to shining tears, each one with a brilliant fire in it. By the time I return they will be gone, run together into the water of the loch.