Walking composition

Raining time

It rained yesterday, hard and cold and fast. I got caught out in it just as I was finishing walking the dog. I’d seen the storm coming from over the mountains and thought it would be slow-moving but it wasn’t, and there was nothing better than to feel and smell that bite of cold in the morning, a promise that the planet’s spin is finally shifting us away from summer. Before my fingers froze and my feet got soaked and the dog started chasing little whirlwinds of fallen aspen leaves, sunlight sparkled on water left by an earlier rain, and this Douglas fir stood there with water on its fingertips in a relationship that was old before I was born and will likely outlast me.

The storm left the mountains dusted with snow—there are few sights that make my heart so glad as winter’s first transformation.