When Rain Isn’t

I knew what was approaching as soon as I heard the sound. People who spend time in the woods are more in tune with rain than those who do not. We outsiders more often hear it coming; insiders see it coming. In a good forest you can hear rain approach from a mile away. You can hear it sneaking by you, hidden by the canopy. Like the bears, deer and other creatures. You know it’s there. It’s part of the experience.
Depending on whether you’re a casual walker or a serious hiker, you respond differently to the threat of rain. If you’re just out for a stroll in the woods, your reaction might be to stop, look, then high-tail it for the car. Backpackers, meanwhile, never break their stride. Their minds are active reviewing options. Like, stop and put on the pack cover like you should have done earlier, get wet ‘cause you know you won’t shrink (and could use a bit of cleaning), or mentally calculating how long until you reach the next shelter.
I glanced up and noticed the early morning sky was that hard-to-believe shade of blue. Sun was streaming through the branches ahead like the beams of thousands of flashlights. Yet, there was that unmistakable sound of rain slowly coming up behind me. I turned to see if I’d be getting wet—well not “if” so much as to what degree I’d be getting wet.
Fooled again! Leaves were cascading from the sky in a red, orange and gold shower. It was the wind loosing dry droplets of beech, oak, maple and hickory. All around me the leaves were falling, not in that floaty, helter-skelter way they usually do, but in a quiet, ordered manner. A perfect, uninterrupted flow from branch to bed. Orderly lines of color against a blue background.
The breeze passed over me just as a shower would have. I held my mouth open trying to catch one of the golden beech leaves like I do with snow flakes. No luck. My body seemed to emit some invisible force that shunted the leaves past and to their designated spot on the forest floor.
It rained for 15 or 20 minutes. I picked up my daypack, now with its icing of leaves, and headed on in the direction of the wind.