April showers at the Marsh

by Jonathan Shipley

Rain—noun. Condensed moisture of the atmosphere falling to the ground visibly in separate drops; the fall of such drops; rainwater.

The earliest known use of the word rain is in the Old English period (pre-1150). The word has about 30 occurrences per million words in modern written English. The word in Finland is sade. In France, pluie. Fon in Thailand. Doshch in Ukraine. The word rain in Korea is bi. In Arabic-speaking countries, matar. For the Ho-Chunk people: nįįžu.

April showers at the Marsh bring May flowers.

The marsh in rainy weather has a different feel. With my boots tied tight, and my knit hat pulled over my ears, the soft rolling susurrus of the rain over the trees and fields, ponds and riverbanks, pulls me inward. As I walk outdoors in the patter of rain, I enter a state of cool contemplation. Maybe I am not the only one.

Such contemplations as, who am I? Why am I here? These questions, I suppose, could be answered by questions. What are you doing here? It’s pouring down rain, you’re cold, you’re soaked, and you could be cozying up at the neighborhood bar watching the Brewers game. I am here, as the Brewers take a lead in the 4th, on these fields alone with my thoughts. Alone, save for the birds, and the budding trees, and the grasses, and the insects, and the soil, and the muskrats, and the deer, and the shrubs, and all the other living, dead, and as-yet-to-be-birthed life here at the marsh.

While supposedly being alone out here, I am not alone at all. The rain reminds me of that. A cold baptism. The living. The as-yet-to-be-birthed.

Madison averages 37.13 inches of precipitation a year. My feet hop over puddles, skirt the streams forming on the winding trails. 37.13 inches. A lot of baptisms occur here at Cherokee Marsh.

The sandhill cranes have returned. Robins, too. The noisy red-winged blackbirds are chattering mightily at the rain clouds. Warblers are starting to reach the wet limbs of trees. Little rainbows, they are, in the gloom before the bloom of late spring and early summer when the rain becomes memory.

The living. The dead.The record for one day of rain in Madison was 4.96 inches in 1906. The wettest month was August 2007, when it rained 15.18 inches. The wettest year was 1881, with 52.91 inches of precipitation. Some of these trees I walk under at the marsh might have felt those raindrops 144 years ago.

The living. The dead. The as-yet-born.

In some traditions, rain at a funeral is seen as a sign of the deceased’s soul being cleansed as they transition to the afterlife. In some traditions, rain is seen as a divine blessing, suggesting that birth is divinely ordained and the child is under protection. In Navajo mythology, Coyote has power over the rain.

Coyotes walk the same wet path I am on here at the marsh. The coyote is out finding food or finding its way back home, in sunshine and downpour, to be with its family.

I do not know the coyote word for rain.