Egan's 'The Good Rain' is still a prescient exploration of the PNW more than 30 years later

This is KUOW's book club, and we just read through the first half of Timothy Egan's "The Good Rain," a masterpiece that travels across the Pacific Northwest. I'm your club guide, Katie Campbell. Let's get into it.

I began reading "The Good Rain" while camping with friends at Steamboat Rock State Park, tucked into my sleeping bag, the smell of campfire in the air. The first pages were punctuated with what I think was a frog’s song and the gentle stirrings of my friends in their tents, bellies full of the sausages and cheese and crackers and wine we had for dinner under the stars. All this talk of salmon and trout makes me wish we had some fishing gear, maybe a little boat to take out tomorrow, catch us something to grill.

Whether Egan takes us wandering through the great Quinault Rain Forest or for, erm, a splash at Cape Disappointment, he captures our relationship to water and "precip" so perfectly. (I’m taking notes on my phone, as I’m on the beach of the Devil’s Punch Bowl and wet from a brisk swim. My phone tried to autocorrect “precip” to “precious.” Even my phone gets it.)

RELATED: KUOW Book Club's October read: Timothy Egan's PNW classic 'The Good Rain'

Allow me to quote Egan quoting another man who seemed to understand the majesty he found on the Olympic Peninsula — or tried to:

Goodness, how right Ickes was. Reading on about the destruction of spruce forests to fuel the need for planes during World War I is heartbreaking, the mark of a short-sighted view of the natural world as our personal toolshed. 

That's the greatest accomplishment of "The Good Rain," in my humble opinion. Egan simultaneously glorifies the unique bio-grandeur of the Pacific Northwest as we know it today while mourning all the ways the people before us squandered it. Rarely have I felt so enamored and yet so ticked off while reading! 

(I will say we seem to disagree about a few things. Chief among them is the climber Fred Beckey who is the dominant focus of chapter four. I'm not a fan and get the impression Egan was right when he observed at the end of the chapter, "God, was he in love" — yes, I think, in love with himself.)

Luckily, Egan's occasionally sardonic humor helps ground me. I enjoyed his apparent angst toward British colonizers in chapter three, particularly this line, as he reflects on their overly proper gardens in Victoria:

Chef's kiss. (Writer's kiss?)

I fancy myself an outdoorswoman, and it occurs to me that I’ve been to some of these places, experienced some of this biology and been informed by Egan’s work without even knowing it. The “nurse logs” described on page 38, for example, had been pointed out to me by the same friends that were sleeping near me as I began reading. Unsurprisingly, they are fans of "The Good Rain." 

My point is this: Though written in 1990, "The Good Rain" continues to inform our collective and individual understanding of this surreal place we simply call the Pacific Northwest. 

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That brings me to what I'm most looking forward to in my conversation with Egan: bringing "The Good Rain" into 2024. This may be more than 30 years old now — older than me even — but so much of it is awfully prescient. 

Chapter one describes a drought that was plaguing the region, with a January that "brought less rain than usually falls in July" and a February that "passed without a gully-washer" (page 14). To think that in 2021, Seattle and much of the region would experience a lethal heat dome, and much of Washington state is in a drought today — the signs were there 30 years ago.

Then there's Egan's descriptions of how devastating the influx of people has been on wildlife, from the salmon to the trees. This passage early in the book spoke to me immediately:

And he said something a tad more coarsely — and hilariously — later on:

That just might be the perfect point to end on. I look forward to talking to Egan about how we can all help to apply the proverbial rash cream to our Venus, our land that continues to sustain us despite our growing demands.