Rainbow's End

The persistent, puzzling, vexing awfulness of foul-weather gear

I live in Los Angeles, and when I moved here from New York I offloaded my rain paraphenalia, laughing all the way. I was living in the desert now, baby! Over my years in New York I had amassed quite a foul-weather wardrobe: rain boats, ponchos, slickers, and a full bouquet of shitty umbrellas, bought on the street in the middle of a flash flood and sturdy enough to last about five minutes. I had high-end rain things—a Barbour coat of lovely waxed cotton, bought on a trip to Scotland—and low-end, too—all manner of flapping plastic capes that looked like the tarps you might toss over lawn furniture. I had a really pretty crinkly rain jacket from Japan that I didn’t trust (it felt too much like paper, and in fact I think it was made of paper, and I pictured it melting at the first raindrop) and an Icelandic fisherman’s coat, made of a heavy silver synthetic, that I thought was really cool but made me look like an Icelandic fisherman. I had Hunter boots that I found in a thrift store (one of my very best thrift store scores). I had rain hats, acquired here and there, of different sizes and shapes and efficacy.

Once I moved from Manhattan to a farm in the Hudson Valley, I needed even more serious rain gear. I bought a plaid snap-front rain jacket with a giant hood that I swear was exactly the same as the one I had in third grade. I acquired low, medium, and high Muck boots, which I swapped around depending on how many fathoms deep the mud was around my chicken coop. I wore the high boots even in the summer, without socks, to keep the ticks off my calves.

Barbour coat, check. Muck boots, check. Black Angus cattle, check.