Drought Busters

By Tom Poland 

Writer’s Note: Stay with me on this column. Where it begins “Nary a drop of rain at my house in weeks” is its original start. I wrote it yesterday as little rain had fallen over my patch of Irmo in weeks. Dry as dust here … As I was writing it, a friend called and offered advice, “Why don’t you wash your car? That guarantees it will rain.” With no time to wash my car, I plowed ahead and finished the column, and a thought hit me. Sure as heck, now that I’ve written this column, if I send it in, it will rain tonight, making a monkey of me. So, I sat on it and, yes it rained last night, almost two inches. So, let me add to my list of drought busters, the writing of a column about how dry it is. Worked like a charm. And, no, lightning did not strike the pine that annoys me to no end … keep reading.

“Nary a drop of rain at my house in weeks.” So wrote a friend to me in an email Sunday. She went on to say that it looks like the same spots get all the storms. “Country folks know that moisture follows moisture.” That sure seems to be the case at my place. It storms all around me, but never over me. I am the antithesis of an oasis. I live in an anti-rain zone. My water bill has tripled and even with that my grass crunches underfoot like cellophane.

Looking at the U.S. Drought Monitor, splotches of yellow, tan, and red cover the parts of Georgia and South Carolina I know best. Conditions range from abnormally dry to extreme drought. Maybe it is time to hang a dead snake in a tree.

Just now, I photographed my rain gauge. When I pulled it from the ground, dust fell from it. I last recall a time like this during the summers of 2002 and 2003. Lake shorelines melted away. Trees died. From his deathbed, Dad sent me to our family church in Georgia to water the large oaks that stand in front of the church. They survived. He didn’t.

Nothing pretty about drought

Just last summer I’d watch the temperature climb here in our famously hot region and when it hit 100 degrees around 3 o’clock, clusters of yellow-orange would pop up on regional radar and soon the heavens opened up. Not this summer.

Wildlife is hurting too. Saturday I went out to water the yards and at the ends of both hoses lay blue-tailed skinks. My fountains and birdbaths stay busy. Squirrels and redbirds drink side by side, and chickadees and nuthatches hang upside down to drink from the ant traps of hummingbird feeders. Shrubs shrivel, junipers die, and the skies remain a parched blue. We’re in a water famine. A few cloudbursts will just provide temporary relief. We need a sustained rain, maybe even a tropical system that moves inland. Maybe we need to resurrect some ancient Indian rainmaker, some shaman who will summon the clouds and unleash a torrent.

I read once of an Indian rainmaker named Sun Bear. I read that the weather followed him wherever he went. Sun Bear said he worked with “the Grandfathers,” a spiritual consciousness that worked with humans and the weather. “Been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. It was their job, sort of,” he said, “but modern science dismissed them and now very few people know they exist.” Maybe so …

We need Sun Bear, a cloud buster. We need rain. Those are my thoughts come late afternoon and early evening. I sit on the deck and listen for the faint rumble of thunder. I look to the horizon for heat lightning. Nothing. Just the in-and-out subsiding of cicadas.

Man has tried to make rain happen. He’s seeded clouds with silver iodide. The Chinese fire thousands of rockets into the clouds. One company tried to pull rain from the sky by sending electricity into the sky. Nothing to write home about as we say. No success of any significance.

In the South, the old saying goes that God always sends rain after a loved one dies. The rain is sent to wash away the dearly departed’s footprints from earth. Well, I cannot recall a time when so many loved ones have died in such a small span. Where’s the rain?

Last summer, my friend and co-author, Robert Clark, and I were down Lowcountry way on a Carolina bay mission. We were near McClellanville to be precise. Ground zero where Hurricane Hugo roared ashore. Turning onto Highway 45, known too as French Santee Road, we made our way through the tall pines of Francis Marion National Forest when a mighty storm struck. Even though the rain fell in sheets, we saw what looked like the sun blazing in the pines to our right. Lightning had struck a pine and about 16 feet up from the ground an inferno blazed. The weather was so bad there was no reason to stop and photograph this Biblical-like scene.

That storm was the last memory I have of a good drenching. At the end of my driveway a tall pine drops pinecones faster than I can pick them up. If the rain gods are listening, I say to them, “Bring a massive storm. Strike that pine. I’ll sacrifice it if that will let the heavens drop a deluge.” Sun Bear hear my words. Work your magic with the Grandfathers. Times are desperate. Maybe I’ll play the role of rainmaker and wash my car. Wish me luck.

As I close, some breaking news. The National Hurricane Center says a tropical wave 1,000 miles off Florida is organizing and moving fast. Not to wish a hurricane on anyone but they do bring rain. Keep your eye on the forecast.

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
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Tom Poland is the author of twelve books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press released his book, Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It, in November 2015 and his and Robert Clark’s Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II in 2014. The History Press of Charleston published Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia in 2014. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture and speaks often to groups across South Carolina and Georgia, “Georgialina.”