A Walk in the Rain

I am slowly trying to get back some level of fitness, so I have been walking on Monte Sano, our over-sized hill that we lovingly call The Mountain.  Today at 8am, the temperature was already 80° and the heat index was 85°, so it pays to go early.  The Weather Channel said we had a slight possibility of widely scattered thunderstorms in the evening.  No problem, I thought!

I hadn't even gone a quarter of a mile when it started to rain.  At first, it was just hitting the leaves of the trees and not making it to the ground, but of course, that didn't last.  Before I had gone 2 miles, I was completely soaked!  There must be a word for people like that — deranged comes to mind — but I kept on walking until I had my full 4 miles and then some.  Surprisingly, I saw relatively few people out there on the trails today . . . maybe they knew something I didn't?

I am one of those people who hates to step in mud.  I will step off the trail into the weeds (this is a Southern forest we're talking about; every inch of ground is covered with some kind of plant, many of them poisonous!) just to avoid the mud.  But today, after valiantly trying to stay out of the mud for about half the walk, I finally gave up and walked right through the next puddle.  I just got the biggest grin on my face and I felt just like a kid splashing in the puddles.  Everyone should try it at least once!

The sun tried to come out for a few minutes while it was still raining and the greens were absolutely luminous.

Photo courtesy of mountain.bike198.com