View from the North 40: And on the 319th day ...

Break out the second layer of clothes, dust off the galoshes, turn up the thermostat and take out the parka, we finally got rain, a cold first-of-the-fall dribbling soaker. I couldn’t be happier unless it was snow.

I thought I’d go a lifetime without ever longing for early winter snow. And honestly, if I go the rest of my life without having cause to be hopeful about the possibility of snow again, or even quite this happy about a cold fall rain, I’ll be grateful.

National Weather Service reported last week that the last time the official Havre weather station had recorded at least .25 inches of rain in a 24-hour period was Oct. 31, 2016. That means we went about 318 days without any real and useful rain. That’s almost a whole year.

One day in the 100-plus degree heat of the dead of summer, I looked up from the parched, cracked earth to stare at the pale, sun-bleached sky and thought, “I don’t remember the last time I got to complain about rain. I miss the old days.”

Then the fires started — one here, another there — until it seemed like the whole state was ablaze and the rallying cries of “Pray for Montana” and “Pray for rain” spread faster than the fires themselves.

About Day 3 of our own East Fork Fire, when it took a mad jump in size, I stood outside, looked up from my dry, brittle, tinderbox of a pasture to stare at the smoke-filled sky and thought, “Praying is nice and all, but we need something bigger. We need irony.

“We need an event, a major event, something scheduled a year in advance, coordinated and worked on by hundreds of people, for the enjoyment of many hundreds more. You want to pray for something? Pray we can hold out until Festival Days. It’s the only thing that’ll save us.”

It’s cold-miserable-fall raining on the 2017 Havre Festival Days, thank you for your sacrifice.

To the people of Havre, the surrounding areas, visitors, I implore you to honor the sacrifice of the efforts and dreams of the event organizers. Show up in the rain to enjoy the activities, cold, shivering, wet and decidedly not on fire. Clap and cheer and hug your neighbors in relief and to keep warm, but get out there and show your appreciation for all they did to make this mighty rain.

Beyond my expectations, they caused rain across the whole state and beyond.

You organizers really outdid yourselves this year. Thank you.

It’s my hope that people take time this weekend to celebrate not fighting a fire, or rounding up supplies to support people fighting fires, or hiding indoors to protect your lungs from the smoke.

Take time to stand along the street clapping at the paraders, scrape the wet and mud off your feet every dang time you walk into an indoor event, curse the weather if you must, but then look up from the puddles into the sky, gray with wet clouds, and laugh and laugh. And remember that this rain shower is brought to you by the water-logged hopes and dreams of so many hard workers sacrificed in the name of weather-related irony.

——

Think about it. The last time we had significant moisture was when it ruined Halloween. Just saying at [email protected].