Caught in a storm

As if it wasn't already hard enough to get my lazy butt out of the house to exercise, nature has apparently decided to put up its own roadblocks. Late Sunday afternoons are the perfect time to sleep, eat, read, catch up on missed television but I decided to take a walk. I got about a half mile out when I looked up at the sky and thought, 'Huh, looks like it's going to rain.' Precisely seven seconds later it began to do just that.

I'll admit it, I'm stubborn. Once I make up my mind about something, there's very little that can stop me. Today, I had a certain point I was going to walk to and goshdarnit I was NOT stopping until I got there. I did, in fact, make it to the point for which I was aiming, but upon turning around to return home, I realized pretty quickly that I had three options: 1) jump on the back of a passing car and hope they don't mind the hop-on 2) run for home and hope that it would let up and 3) take shelter under a tree until the storm let up. It may not surprise you that I immediately ruled out the second option, and the first one was out of the picture because there was not a vehicle in sight that looked to be going slow enough for me to attempt a hijacking. So, I tucked my MP3 player into my sports bra, ran across the street and began plodding into the shallow forest lining the road.

Approximately ten steps in, I thought, 'Dear Lord, please don't let that be poison ivy.' Luckily, if it was, only my ankles were exposed. I finally found a tree upon which I could lean, and I listened as Billy Joel sang "Only a Woman to Me" to me while I watched the rain collect on the leaves of the surrounding trees and then gracefully fall in large drops to the ground. I watched as the sky, which minutes before had been blue with spots of white, turn to a deep, translucent gray that seemed to permeate everything, coloring the day melancholy. The air seemed to thicken with the overwhelming sense of thoughtfulness that the rain brought and I breathed in as slowly and deeply as I could, hoping to remember this moment forever.

Eventually I made a run for it when the rain seemed to let up. When I wound back up at home, I was soaked through but my spirits were high. For me, everything looked beautiful because I was seeing through a lens framed by dark eyelashes dripping with raindrops and the world seemed indescribably... pure. It's not, and I will inevitably forget the way I feel right now, but for the moment, I cherish the rain.