Greenland’s silent rain

• Photo by Jose Fontano on Unsplash

Living in Greenland, I miss the sound of rain. That’s not to say that it doesn’t rain in Greenland. It does. Sometimes a lot. But I miss the sound of it. Sitting in my living room, I can see the rain falling, but through triple-glazed windows, I can’t hear it. Outside, it falls silently on the soft earth, or on the snow. So when I am abroad, peering out into a grey mist, listening to the patter on a window pane, I am reminded of how soothing, how comforting that sound is.

Rain. We used to live in the tropics. Warm, hammering rain would burst from the sky, a sweeping wall of grey that would shroud the view even of the houses across the street. When it was raining, there was nothing else but the rain, clattering down, driven relentlessly by deep, booming whips of approaching thunder. And then it would stop. As suddenly as it had started. The last wispy threads of water dripping from the wrung clouds, the wet pavement already steaming, puddles shrinking back into themselves, as if embarassed by their past passion. And the tropical sun would burn through, leaving one gasping for breath in the humid aftermath.

Rain.

In more temperate climes, the low, long patter tap-tap-taps at the window, or sings its rhythmic song on iron roofs. The sound washes through me and I think of cool, dark afternoons as a child, the rain-washed breeze on my cheek as I sat beneath a plastic awning outside my grandmother’s house, completely enveloped in the sound of pattering rain, my face inches from the falling drops, breathing in the sweet smell of the wet soil. Breathing in. Breathing out.

Rain.

But in Greenland the rain is silent. It falls on the soft ground. It falls noiselessly outside my window. I miss its pattering voice. Despite this, I have a treasured memory of rain in Greenland. After long weeks of field work in the mountains, peaceful treks alone in the hills, sweeping vistas of distant icebergs in the dark blue fjords. After this, my treasured memory is of waking alone in my tent. Warm in my sleeping bag. My mind just emerging from sleep’s dark cave, my eyelids fluttering in the yellow light of the tent’s cocoon-like shade, and I hear that sound. The sound of cool, dark afternoons. A soft patter on the canvas, only inches from my face. I shuffle and, content, drift back into darkness.