Olivia Fowler

On The Way

By Olivia Fowler

We’ve grown accustomed to the rain. And that’s a good thing, as it’s inevitable. The pattern has grown so predictable that it is more remarkable to see a patch of blue sky than thick black clouds. No matter the weather in other parts of the county, we can safely say that the stretch of Rice’s Creek Road where Fowler Farm is located will get rainfall every afternoon without fail.

Pickens lies north of us. Six Mile is to the west, Liberty is east and Atlanta is south.

The storm clouds begin gathering around 4 p.m. From our front porch distant thunder can be heard. It sounds as though someone’s bowling with a mighty big ball in Six Mile.

The clouds behind Six Mile Mountain may come our way, but not always. On occasion we can hear the storm as it moves toward Pickens and the sky in the northwest will be black as soot.

On occasion the winds change course and the storm takes a turn and moves our way instead of going on to Easley.

So that’s an iffy situation. We may get rain from this or may not.

But the surest fire way to know if it’s coming our way is to study the behavior of the dogs.

None of the dogs like thunder. But they seem to know whether or not we’re going to get a direct hit.

Humans would be wise to go inside the house when Sebastian, Red Dog, Kewpie and Diablo leave the front porch and run to the tractor shed, where they’re sure to find Fowler.

They apparently feel safe in the shop with him and have no confidence in the safety of the porch or my ability to protect them.

It’s uncanny. But we’re told dogs have senses and abilities humans don’t have, and thunderstorm prediction and location seem to fall under the heading of special abilities.

Sometimes a storm will come from the Atlanta area. When this happens we know to batten down the hatches, because that particular storm heads straight for us.

And it will usually be a pretty brisk affair. On the weather channel they refer to this as “thunderstorm activity.” It will make the house vibrate and rattle the windows.

This is when we experience the phenomena known as horizontal rain. If anyone is caught outside in the torrential downpour combined with wind, rain slickers and umbrellas offer no more protection than a paper bag.

But no matter what the weather, animals have to be fed, vegetables must be picked, eggs have to be gathered and the daily routine must go on. We adjust and accustom ourselves to being wet. And no matter what anyone thinks, it’s still better to have flood than drought.

It will be interesting to see if fall and winter bring even more rain. Perhaps we need to move the kayaks to the front porch just to be on the safe side.