Chapter One
Where a Drop Begins
Before it touches anything, rain belongs to no street. It has no opinion about the roof, no preference for the garden and no understanding of the drain beneath the bus stop. The moment it lands, however, a place begins to direct it. A leaf holds a little. A roof sends a little toward its edge. Bare earth opens a path downward if the ground can take more water. Paving turns the fall into a journey across its surface. The shower that looks uniform from a window is already dividing into many stories.
Stand at a doorway while the rain is light enough to see individual impacts. On a hard sill, small beads join and lean toward the lowest corner. On leaves, the same rain waits and drops later. Across a road, there may be no visible movement at first. Then separate bright spots become a moving sheet. The difference does not require a grand storm. It begins with the contact between water and material, and with the slope that was there before the clouds arrived.
The word route sounds as if somebody has drawn a line from start to finish. Rain is less obedient. Water that enters soil may be held near a root, move deeper or return to the air through a plant. Water that reaches a drain may pass through a pipe to a stream. Where different systems exist, a drain may be connected to a treatment route or to a waterway. Some of the water on an open surface evaporates. The routes depend on the setting and may change during the same shower as soil fills or a channel rises. The value of following a drop is that it makes these forks visible.
