February 26, 2008

It’s been a rainy winter. Wetter than in many years, and while its been pesky, it’s been a good thing. If you’ve lived here any time at all, then you know that we, as an island, have been suffering from several years of drought. Drought and an ever-growing thirst caused by expanding population.

As rainy as it’s been, it can’t rain enough.

The county council expects our population to double in the next fifteen years.

Did you get that? Double! (Rhymes with trouble!) Imagine Dairy Road on a rainy day with double the traffic load. And it won’t be locals, as we know them. No, it’s all people coming in. People with various social customs who have set their emotional and financial sites on Maui, (nirvana?) and most likely, having paid heavy entry fees, will feel entitled to their dream.

They just might be miffed on Dairy Road, as they splash through puddles in their massive assault vehicles.  They may feel thwarted by the ill-timed lights and the snarl of traffic. You gentle reader, might find yourself between them and their intended Costco parking space in pursuit of the ever-expanding cheese department. Just a thought. Imagine yourself fifteen years from now.

Growth is a touchy topic on an island. Quite possibly everyone is right. It shouldn’t happen. It must happen. It has happened. We will look back and wonder why we failed to plan better. Generations that come after us will wonder if we ever planned at all. Most of us are working so hard balancing our own small homesteads that we are pretty out of touch with the topsy-turvy development that spirals out around us. We are growing like a virulent cancer, unchecked and unimpeded by our elected officials.

But back to rain. The weather has shifted, as we all tried to remember it would. I’m happy to find the sun back out after a soupy winter that reduced my driveway to chocolate cake batter. I admit that I am one of those people who like rain and I thought I would never complain of getting too much. I now stand corrected. A sunny day IS worth a bucket of gold!

How wet did it get? What a wonderful contest.

The winner wins leather shoes that are green with mold. Or a door that is swollen shut until summer, or maybe those back steps that once were jaunty and firm a few years back, are now reminding you that wood is organic and can become like mossy logs decomposing on the forest floor, composting back into loam. Perhaps some surprising hairy growth on audio gear brings recording to a halt. It’s just real time in the tropics and we endure it with smile after smile.

A friend of mine is renting a room out to a gal from Alaska. When they last spoke on the phone she said the temperature out there was 48 below. That’s below zero, so take forty-eight, add thirty-two and call me in the morning.

How do people do it? We from the islands just can’t imagine. I guess Dairy Road isn’t so bad after all.
And that’s the problem isn’t it? The fact that we have no real problem at all. But hang in there, we’re working on it.

Ginger Johnson