Nature is Never Spent

I walked across campus to my car this evening in pouring rain. It was refreshing. Summer rain should touch your skin and soak your clothes every once in awhile.

I don't like wet socks and shoes, though. In college, I would just go barefoot if I was going to have to wade through puddles to get somewhere. The pavements on that campus were fairly clean and safe. Here, I don't trust them so much, so I keep a pair of molded foam clogs in my office to wear on these occasions. (They're also handy to slip into after class when my feet hurt from standing for hours in my respectable work shoes.) The clogs have holes in the sides and top for ventilation, which means they get water in them when it's raining, but it also means the the water drains right away.

This evening, the rain just felt like... rain, but once I was wet, the wind made me feel almost chilled. So it was a bit of a surprise the first time I stepped into a small stream of water in one of the parking lots. Warm. The water was bathtub-warm. The pavement gets so hot on summer days -- apparently even on cloudy days like today -- that it had heated the collected rainwater almost to the temperature of tea. To get to my car, I had to cross a particularly deep stream, up to my ankles. The water flowed through my shoes, rippled around my feet. It was like a little jacuzzi action for my tired dogs. If I hadn't been afraid of lightning, I might have stayed there for awhile, enjoying it.

Here's a lovely photo of feet in summer rain.