Liquid Sunshine

Rain, rain, rain. endless rain. July had not one dry day, and now September.  All is wet and puddled. Streams of mist ribbon across the valleys like long, silken scarves. Clouds the color of dirty dish cloths hang over the mountaintops. The rivers are swollen and tumble down vertical mountainsides in shining streams.  Big boulders are sluffed off the hillside. Tree trunks slump into the water from sodden riverbanks, and logs float out to sea. The bald eagles are sodden too and hang their wings out to dry, looking more like cormorants than majestic birds of prey. In the forest, the spruce and hemlock drip beads of rain onto velvet beds of moss that shine a brilliant green in the endless damp, and fungi in varying shades of brown poke out to soak up the rain.

Juneauites absorb the rain like Texans would the sunshine. I swear they are born with rubber boots on their feet:  XtraTufs – they never take them off. A shirtless man skateboards through puddles, his hair slick, wet and stuck to his head. He is shiningly wet. Another in shorts and singlet is jogging through the rain. At the high school, children practice soccer, regardless.  I wear a broad-brimmed hat and two raincoats to keep dry.  

This land feeds on rain, 230 days of some kind of precipitation a year in Juneau. Without it, there would be no temperate rainforest, no icefield the size of Rhode Island, no glacial silt washed down to the ocean loaded with minerals to feed the marine life, no salmon or whales. This is a land of rain and ice, and it is magnificent when the blue sky breaks through and a shot of sunlight brightens the rich green world. Like waiting for a small child to stop wailing, when it happens, you smile and all becomes beautiful. At those times, I stop and look upward to the clouds that part in silence, an eagle soars, and out on the water, a whale slaps its black-and-white flukes framed against the endless range of snow-capped mountains. Then I know why I am here.

Hikes in the rain are endeavors in jollity. We welcome the cruise-ship guests to a classic South East Alaskan day, and call the rain “liquid sunshine.”  But those who sign up are ready to hike, and I have had no one complain or want to turn back. They are enchanted by the luminescent green of the forest, the red berries that bears are eating before heading into hibernation, the mycelium network I call the internet of the forest, and glimpses of the fast-retreating Mendenhall Glacier and an iceberg floating in the lake.  We hike about five miles, climbing 700 feet above the lake, passed swollen waterfalls on paths streaming with water.  It’s an Alaska experience, and I serve them hot cider when we get back on the bus.

Here's a typical September weather forecast on the local Junneau radio for a possibly sunny day: "It’s 43 degrees right now in downtown Juneau and misty with a 30 percent chance of rain. There might be sunshine today and it could dry, and there may be rain. Tomorrow looks dry and rain for the rest of the week, but there might be sunshine this weekend."

I have learned to waterproof my raincoats regularly and wear two pairs of woolen socks.

Adriane and Eileen, forever stalwart, in the July rain