There's Only One Word For It...

Every culture has endearing names for our planet. Most refer to her as Mother Earth, such as Pachamama in the Quechua language, or Grandmother, such as Maca Unci in Lakota. I’ve even heard her referred to as “The Water Planet,” but I’m not sure from where that came. Short of having a near-death-experience, even in my most creative reveries, I cannot imagine a more beautiful place to live than Planet Earth.

What’s not to love about her?

Drizzle.

I must admit, until a few minutes ago, I had no idea how much I despise drizzle. I love extremes: extreme cold, extreme heat, powerful storms – except at sea. I think I’ve drowned at sea several times, the thought of which still “shivers me timbers.”

Drizzle is the kind of thing that makes me wonder, “Is it raining or not? Do I need a raincoat or not?” I look at puddles to see if I can see anything splashing. I can’t tell.

Drizzle is the Shadow Side of Rain; the Trickster of Rain World. A ghost. Is it there or not?

At its most insidious it turns into freezing rain. I don’t think drizzle ever turns into snow. Drizzle has to be the only thing that ever turns into freezing rain. I hate it.

But drizzle as drizzle has no passion; no intensity; no real reason to be. It lacks purpose. Verve. Élan vital.

Drizzle is a half-hearted, apathetic, unenthusiastic, uninteresting, lackadaisical, perfunctory, impassive, unresponsive limpness.

Drizzle is nature’s equivalent to Erectile Dysfunction.

Drizzle falls from candy-ass clouds colored somewhere between dingy white and light gray. Drizzle clouds are hard to look at. They remind me of trying to see out a window covered in thick plastic. No one ever takes a picture of drizzle clouds.

Whereas there may be fifty-seven Eskimo words for snow, there’s only one for drizzle: drizzle.

Drizzle never leaves a rainbow.

Yesterday I could not get outside fast enough. Why? Because lightning began to shred the sky and thunder bounced off both cloud and ground. These are the Wakia, the Thunderbeings of the Lakota! I ran outside to one of my favorite trails, knowing the best hadn’t started yet.

Explosive bolts of lightning hurled through angry-looking, fast moving and billowing gray-black clouds, ripping them open to release huge drops of cold, wind-driven rain, then hail, then more rain. Drops hit the ground, then splashed up like tap dancers, creating rhythmic sound and motion. Lightning bolts came fast and furious. I could hear the air around me heat up and sizzle.

You know the lightning is close when you can hear the air sizzle around you.

Compare that to drizzle.

Or don’t.

There is no comparison. It never lightnings when it drizzles. To walk outside when it’s drizzling is boringly safe.

Years ago a friend was riding his horse when a storm moved in. Lightning hit them both. My friend was knocked off his horse. The horse lost at least one horseshoe and ran off. My friend found the horse, but never found the horseshoe. I’ve been telling him for years we need to go back there and find it. I’d rent a metal detector. He keeps looking at me as if I’m joking. I’m not. If I knew where this happened, I’d go look for it myself. Can you imagine the power inside a horseshoe that got knocked off a horse by lightning? In indigenous cultures, a lightning-struck object is known as a medicine piece, a power object, or a talisman. Genghis Khan had such a medicine piece.

Drizzle never creates medicine pieces. Gene Kelly could sing in the rain, but not in drizzle. No one would see a movie titled: Singing in the Drizzle. Drizzle can’t create anything other than freezing rain, or, as some women have told me, curls. Personally, I prefer to have my hair curled by lightning.

I suppose drizzle is something only a mother, or grandmother, could love.