The other day I took a walk in the rain—unplanned. That is, I planned to walk, but I did not plan for the rain, which began as I was parking my car at the head of the walking path.
I could have turned back. But I didn’t want anything to stop me from taking this walk.
Sometimes it’s the small accomplishments that feel the best. It was hard for me to go out and walk alone that day, and I could have used the rain as an excuse, but I didn’t.
As the rain got stronger and thunder sounded in the distance, I got happier.
I remember the walking adventures that Adrian and I had together over the years. One unexpectedly warm early winter day, we walked up the steep gorge path at Treman Park in the late afternoon.
There is a bridge two-thirds of the way to the top, and we would often walk up that far, cross over the bridge, and walk down the other side to the far parking lot, which connected via a small bridge to the main parking lot.
On this day we made it to the bridge, crossed over, and started down. A slight drizzle began. We weren’t worried, even though it was now dusk, because we were headed downhill and didn’t have that far to go.
We noticed that a number of people were on the path as we went up, but no one was on the path going down on the other side. We discovered why when we got to the bottom: the little connecting bridge had been taken down for the winter. There was no safe way to cross, with the water raging.
It was now raining harder and quite dark. With the water covering my glasses, I could hardly see. We had no hats, flashlight, cell phones, etc. We always traveled light.
Our choice was to go back up the path in the dark—not a good one—or to attempt to find our way to the highway from where we were, and follow that back to the main parking lot.
That’s what we did, with Adrian leading the way. While I’m good at keeping track of things one can keep track of, he had a better natural instinct for the right way to go. I had to give up my desire for control and just follow him.
As my feet squished in my wet sneakers the other day at the end of my walk in the rain, I thought of that day—of how relieved Adrian and I were to finally find our car in the parking lot at the end of our adventure.
My walk in the rain this week may have been a minor one, but I am happy these days with small accomplishments.
