Rain Year

It was a summer of subtraction: a thousand roots torn up, hundreds of branches cut and chipped, trees topped or felled, bone white holly wood stacked to dry for new year fire. Sammy, the dancing black cat, passed over at solstice. She, who skittered over the roof after squirrels, caught lizards, chipmunks, snakes, and grown jays to bring inside the house unharmed and release for play, grew old. Shore up fences against the winter wind and clear the gutter drains. I will keep the shoe box used to save Sammy’s prey on top the bookcase a while longer.

October starts a new count; the rain year began on the 1st. Soon after, a winter storm blew in from the northwest and took the leaves off the dogwood and shook the oaks. The fir sway and whisper together.

There is no moon tonight, it’s drained away and returned to darkness approaching the sun. A mirror, a pool, a puddle, seeking reflection, a black moon. Each month is a moon, with some added sprinkles, a seed, a struggle, fruit or frustration, an unwinding, a letting go. This new moon marks the end of all the late summer sorting. The season of weighing gold and grain after casting away the chaff is here.

Summer evenings I sat on the back porch and watched the planet Venus slip lower in the western horizon at twilight. Now she disappears from sight, fallen under the earth from the night sky, until joining the sun on October 25th. She rises as the morning star at the end of the month, a slim crescent, on All Hallows.

Crossroads and thresholds, liminal spaces we’ve arrived at or stumbled upon, another outcast stepchild in a fairy tale trying to solve the riddle of the Sphinx.

A note on “rain year:”

U.S.Geological Survey “water year” […] is defined as the 12-month period October 1, for any given year through September 30, of the following year.
https://water.usgs.gov/nwc/explain_data.html

Author: Kim K. McCrea

Kim K. McCrea earned her BA in English before embarking on a career in technology and public service. Kim won Oregon Writers Colony 2018 essay award, Treefort’s 2017 Wild West Writing Prize, and was named runner-up in Cutbank 2018 Big Sky/Small Prose contest. Her creative nonfiction is featured in Cutbank, Tishman Review, Cagibi, and elsewhere; she is the author of the novel Pandora's Last Gift. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Kim lives in Oregon, where she studies the moon and stars and wanders with her Labrador in the rain. View all posts by Kim K. McCrea