I generally like walking in all kinds of weather. I’ll bundle up in the Winter cold, fortify my sinuses with allergy medicine in the sniffy Spring, get out early in the morning in the heat of Summer, and bask in the glory of a crisp Fall day. Rain is my only walking nemesis. I have layered up and done it, but it’s mostly no fun. If it’s humid, my rain coat turns my torso into a sauna. Water drips from my hat or my hood, sometimes splashing on my glasses. I’ll wear sandals in the summer and waterproof hiking boots otherwise, but it’s just not as rejuvenating as other times, and it creates a wet mess.
We just returned from a two-week camping trip near the beaches of Delaware. Delaware isn’t a big state and they have just a small slice of the Atlantic at their disposal, but they’ve carved out two lovely state parks that have kept vacation cottages and condos at bay. Our stay involved both of those parks, but the high demand for campground spots left us having to reserve at a private campground inland for the weekend right in the middle of our trip. As it turned out, it was good to be inland, for that was the time period when the remnants of Hurricane Ian blew up the mid-Atlantic, delivering windy buckets of water in swirls over the course of five days.
Our private campsite was in a large seasonal RV park perched among pines about eight miles inland. Most of the hundreds of sites had permanent trailers on them, some that were as old as I. Since it was late September, most of the summer folks were long gone. A few permanent residents and a handful of shoulder season folks were all the human life we saw, other than two other overnight campers like us. Emmett and I got one good walk in the first afternoon we were there (the rains was just spitting at that point), and that was pretty much it for the next four days. Other than taking the dogs out to attend to their necessary hygiene and a couple of trips into town for a movie and some shopping, we two humans and two dogs stayed confined to our 300 square feet of sanctuary, tucked under some trees that looked sturdy enough to endure gale-force winds (which they did).
I’m used to logging about 12,000 steps a day on average and I struggled to get that many in over the course of the next few days. Emmett, my long distance walking companion, and I (the two Type-A personalities on board) got progressively more and more restless as the days wore on. We walked a little when there was a temporary reprieve from the heavier rain, but it was not pleasant. Emmett hates getting water on his head (an important survival defense for dogs who otherwise might think they’re drowning) and I at least had the benefit of a raincoat. But we had no vestibule or porch to transition us out of our wetness, so our shower doubled as a drip zone for wet gear.
At home-home, I can jump on the treadmill, log onto Netflix and walk for a couple of hours. That wasn’t an option. I thought about pacing back and forth, front to back, a distance of 24 feet one way. I did something similar when I was isolating in our guest bedroom for ten days with a false Covid diagnosis, but there was no one else in there to be driven crazy by my pacing.
In a moment of reflection, I realized that I could survive if I didn’t get my steps in, even on multiple days. It was good practice for my addiction-prone personality to have to let go of something repetitive, predictable, meaningful and life-giving, even if for a few days. The rain wasn’t an enemy as much as an unwitting teacher. And when the sun finally did come out, the subsequent walks became that much more appreciated.
In the Third Step Prayer for Alcoholics Anonymous, a prayer I try to say every morning as I wake up, I have found myself modifying one line in recent months: “Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I might help…”. I’ve come to recognize that I don’t want God to “take away my difficulties,” because they are always teaching opportunities that I would otherwise miss. I might wish for a few to be removed (cancer was a lesson I would have been fine skipping, though I did learn from it), but life’s difficulties are some of the best learning tools we have. More recently I instead began asking God to “transform my difficulties” and that feels more true.
Rain is an important part of the cycles of nature, though hurricanes appear to have little positive merit to the global ecosystem. But hurricanes and other severe weather continue to remind us of their power and of our arrogance in thinking we can barricade and insulate ourselves from their fury. They are the rapping-our-knuckles-with-a-ruler types of teachers and yet we remain slow to learn.
So, a little rain over the course of a few days is a small price to pay for the lesson of seeking shelter, spending more quality time in a snug spot with one you love, and learning to let go of expectations that will go unmet, but that can instead be transformed into other moments of grace and gratitude.