On Friday, August 5, I set out on an errand and traveled along Concord Street toward Ashland. As I approached the town line, a sudden deluge of rain fell – much appreciated in this summer of drought. I returned back to Holliston via Highland Street and saw rivers of rain still merrily running down the sides of the wet roadway – until I approached Holliston Square and Mudville. The ground was dry, nary of drop of rain to be see there. Why does this happen?

Perhaps you have noticed while traveling around the general area surrounding Holliston. Perhaps you have heard thunder rumbling from somewhere near Medway with no showers appearing here. Or, as I once saw while traveling down Summer Street, rain appeared suddenly once I crossed the line over to Medway as if a boundary line had been drawn across the road – but no rain in Holliston. Or perhaps you were over in Framingham or Natick – and even Ashland – where there was a veritable cloudburst, but when reaching Holliston – all dry, no rain, and the dark clouds were still rumbling by northeastward.

When rain is predicted, I watch the rain clouds heading our way on the radar, as seen on the local TV weather reports, or on our increasingly handy phone apps that predict 100% chance of rain!! – but no rain falls here. And just as the scattered rain showers seem to be inevitably heading toward Holliston, something odd happens – the showers often don’t seem to reach just that little bit more eastward and instead, splits and partly heads northeastward, and partly wanders southeastward.  I watch the divergence with a modicum of “dry humor.”

Certainly, Holliston does get a good, long soaking rainstorm from time to time as September 5 and 6 have shown us that we don’t miss the big ones, but it is those scattered showers that seem to frequently pass us by. Those showers tend to follow the pattern as seen on the August 5 shot. There, the scattered showers head toward Framingham, the others dip below Holliston and head toward Franklin. Perhaps a meteorologist will explain to us the scientific reason why this happens.

This interesting weather phenomenon didn’t just crop up recently. Scattered rain showers and prevailing weather patterns have been around since time immemorial. One unfortunate gap in local history is very little Native American indigenous knowledge was passed down through the centuries to tell us what this land was like 300 or 400 years ago – and long before that. We do know there was a significant Native American presence on this land long ago before we knew about Holliston, but there are whispers found in old records and writings left to us by early inhabitants. Holliston is situated near the easternmost region occupied by the Nipmuc tribe. We do know they spent time camped by Lake Winthrop – once called “Wennakeening” and traveled through here on the pathway known as Pout Lane. Evidence of their time here remains.

There was someone we can introduce who knew about this phenomenon. He was known by the nickname, Old Hendrick, the last member of the Nipmuc Owasomaug family and he resided in a campsite near the south end of Lake Winthrop. He left Holliston and moved to Mendon where he died in 1830.  According to the essay, “Wennakeening,” written and published in the Holliston Transcript in November 1879, Hendrick declared that he was leaving this area because “the Great Spirit who sent all the showers either down the Charles River on the one side or the Sudbury River on the other side had forsaken this land.” Old Hendrick knew about those wandering showers, a bit of indigenous knowledge that we can observe using our 21^st century science.