I can remember many rainy days in Reston. My grown children have told me that Reston has had plenty of rain in the last few days. I know our home in the mountains of Virginia got rain and now it is having a hard time stopping.
Here on North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks, we have actually been very dry. There was little or no rain in the month of May until we got about one third inch on May 17. Since then we have only seen sprinkles until last night when we finally got about one half inch of rain.
We needed the rain, but it occurred to me that there was something fundamentally different about our rain here on the coast and Northern Virginia rain.
Just like a television commercial I am willing to walk in the rain in my bare feet. I rarely wear shoes or even sandals when I go get the morning newspaper this time of year. I actually like the feel of the cool concrete on my feet.
The wet concrete with a light rain on it feels even better. Perhaps it takes me back to those childhood days in the Piedmont of North Carolina when as kids we never wore shoes. I can still remember the challenge of walking on our gravel driveway with no shoes.
Even today when I put on shoes, they likely would get me laughed out of a city.
Then again maybe walking down the driveway reminds me of walking along the wet sand on the beaches. Perhaps it is the closest thing that I can get early in the morning to a great day on the beach.
Whatever it is, I would not walk to the mailbox in Reston in bare feet. It is just not something you do in a city. The rain does not run nearly as clear in any city as it does here at the beach. Maybe our skies that stay almost perpetually brilliant Carolina blue have something to do with that.
Of course life is a lot more casual at the beach. There are very few suits, and most of our umbrellas are beach ones. It is not that unusual to see people standing outside in a light shower talking.
Perhaps we are deluding ourselves, but it is a very pleasant delusion.
