Walking in Rain That Does Not Quite Arrive
The forecast said rain from two o'clock and I went out at one, because the rain did not arrive for three hours and I wanted to be in the valley when it did.
There is a particular kind of drizzle that never quite arrives. The sky holds it. You walk out under a grey lid, and every few minutes the light changes a little, and you think: there it is. And then it passes, and the light comes back up, and the pavement stays dry under your feet while the air goes on being damp around your face. For three hours the rain is a promise being made and withdrawn.
It is a strange condition to walk in and I found it unexpectedly restful. There is no decision to make about going in. The rain has already decided; you are simply waiting for it to catch up, and waiting is a thing you can do very well on a footpath.
Waiting also makes you look at the edges of things. The whole walk I was noticing surfaces that were about to be wet: the leaves on the path, the pale side of a fence, the rims of puddles that had not yet decided to be puddles. Everything was on the threshold of something, and the hour made me look at thresholds. I saw a woman put her hand flat on a wall to feel it and take the hand away again, still deciding. I saw a cyclist ride three feet of grass and get off to push. Everyone was slightly uncertain about the weather, and I found it companionable rather than annoying, which is not how I usually feel about uncertainty.
By four o'clock the sky made up its mind and it came down properly, and I was ten minutes from the house with no coat on. I got wet in the way that people who have made a poor decision get wet, which is to say completely, and while still thinking about the hour before.
I have had better walks. But I have not had many where the weather was the subject and the walking was only the excuse for it.