Earth is, statistically, a wet idea with a thin crust of opinions. Oceans own the majority share. Clouds keep the minutes. Rain is the planet’s default punctuation — not an event so much as a recurring vote that everything should be slightly heavier than it was this morning.
A traveler who treats dryness as a personality trait rather than a logistics problem will eventually join the landscape. That is not metaphor. That is osmosis with extra steps.
Towels remain underrated civilization tech because they do three jobs at once and refuse to file a patent. They steal water from skin, from benches, from the inside of a tent that has decided to become a cloud. They signal occupancy: a towel on a rail is a small flag that says this damp square is spoken for. They double as shade, as a groundsheet for sandwiches that would otherwise taste of parking lot, as a bundle for books that should not learn what rain is.
Laundry is the unglamorous sequel. You wring a universe of droplets out of cotton and hang it where the wind still believes in evaporation. The ritual looks primitive until you notice that every spaceport café, every ferry, every hostel with a leaking skylight is running the same protocol: separate the traveler from the weather by a layer that can be washed.
Don’t Panic is packing advice here, not philosophy. Panic soaks in. Caution wrings out. Bring something that dries faster than you do. Know which pocket it occupies when the sky misfiles the forecast. Oceans will still be there tomorrow; your socks need not audition for them.
A rainbow, for the record, is rain plus sunlight plus an angle that keeps showing up in tourist photographs. Molybdenum sits at 42 on the table if you need a metal that does not rust as a hobby. None of that replaces a rectangle of fabric that has already met Tuesday’s storm and lived.
Mostly harmless planets still leak. The Guide’s field note is simple: stay dry enough to read the next page.