An Ode To Rain
Today we’re talking rain, one of the most criminally under appreciated aspects of the natural world which everyone seems to hate because “it’s depressing” and “I don’t like being wet.” First of all, find some original reasons. Those ones are played out and then some. Second, and more importantly, I’m going to give you some reasons why rain is not awful and why it’s actually pretty dope when you think about it.
So, what is rain? A simple enough question. Rain is water which falls from the sky. Now play that sentence back in your head. Rain is WATER which FALLS FROM THE SKY. How fucking sick is that? What else falls from the sky?? Nothing good. Snow is the only other option and all snow is is rain but frozen into tiny ice crystals. And snow, while beautiful upon initial impact, is terrible and inconvenient once it’s on the ground. Rain, on the other hand? Nourishes plants? Check. Brings a nice refreshing smell? Check. Washes off roads and sidewalks of weird stuff? Check. Makes a super relaxing sound as it falls? Yet again, check. It checks all the boxes. Yes it sucks when it’s Memorial Day weekend and you can’t go outside because it’s raining, but look at this laundry list of positives. Rain is dope. Also, imagine if it was sunny every day?? Sunny weather would lose its meaning entirely. They have places on Earth that are sunny all the time. They’re called deserts. And many of them are largely devoid of life. Not the move. So from a logistical perspective, rain wins round one.
Now we’re going to go at rain from a pure force of nature perspective. So what’s the process behind this stuff anyway? You start off with water, wherever it may be on the Earth’s surface. Simple enough. Oceans, rivers, lakes, all that. Then you have the sun (giant ball of fire and gas 94ish million miles away) which takes this water and evaporates it up into the air. A process by which the water becomes invisible (spooky, also a cool talent) and then forms clouds (giant floating white jawns that have been cruising around the skies for millions of years before planes.) Still following? Then, when there’s enough of this water in one place, it gets heavy and all falls underneath the cloud until there’s no water left. In certain cases, this is accompanied by GIANT BOLTS OF ELECTRICITY which explode outwards towards the ground hitting shit and a loud noise knows as thunder. Before we had science people literally assumed this was because of gods. And we haven’t even gotten into hurricanes which is where you take all that and make it spin really fast. So next time it’s raining, instead of thinking “I don’t want to get wet” maybe think wow this is an absolute miracle force of nature which we haven’t observed anywhere else in the known universe. Also maybe just stay inside.
Finally we’re going to combine the smell of rain and mist into this next paragraph. To use a science word, the smell of rain is actually something called petrichor. This is caused by the release of plant oils and by microbacteria in the soil which release geosimin (or maybe the plants release the geosimin? Do your own research.) All that matters is the end product of this process is a super refreshing smell which is dope. Also too, we’re gonna talk mist. Remember those clouds we talked about in the last paragraph? Imagine one of those bad boys on the ground that makes everything creepy. Pretty sick. You take a perfectly normal view and add a little mist to it and all of a sudden you’ve spiced up the whole ambiance. Mind blowing to me that people don’t appreciate these factors more. Gonna repost a picture but check out how cool this is.
Notice how there is absolutely 0 visibility beyond a certain distance. Too dope. Hiding in plain sight out here. Last and certainly not least is the relaxing sound of rain. Many people will complain about rain but then pop on one of those 10 hour long youtube videos of rain white noise to fall asleep to or meditate or study or do whatever and have on in the background. Maybe try appreciating the real thing? The whole situation is backwards and as you can tell I think rain should get more love and that’s why I’ve written this blog. Next time you catch your self in a rainstorm, find somewhere a little more dry and just watch and appreciate it. Maybe find an awning by your house, break out the grill and chef up some burgers next to it. Fire and water right there. That’s duality. All I’m saying is, rain doesn’t need to be depressing. It can be awesome instead.
Speaking of rain, we collected 3 more shopping bags worth of trash in it earlier today. To follow progress, check out theregrowthproject.com or my IG, theregrowthproject. You can support by copping merch, and keep your eyes peeled for some other eco-friendly goods in the future. Would love to provide people with products they can use that make the world a greener place (just like rain.) If there’s a way to follow along with the blog on this website maybe toss that a follow too. Your call.
