Outpacing the Rain

The sun was shining. No sooner had I noted this along with my intention to walk than I saw rain on the windows on the back of the house. Not on the front. Ergo I would walk out the front door. Lest you think that I have stepped into Heinlein's (or was it Bradbury's?) fictional Doorway into Summer, let me offer an anecdote about the wisdom to be learned from cats and a reminder about geography. I once lived in a passive solar house. My cat knew where the warmth came from. When he asked to be let out the front door and it was 10 below zero and 6 inches of hard frozen snow, he quickly retrenched and went to the warm door to be let out. Alas, there is a limit to cat logic on the plains of Illinois. In the far north of Scotland, however, it can be raining in the back yard but not in the front.

So I went out the front door and up the hill to see what life was like in the hedgerows and on the pastures and to think about some of the ideas in my latest email conversation with my daughter. I think there is an article in them, but as my new pal and writing colleague said in our recent email conversation, the ideas for an article kind of swirl around for awhile before they see the light of day. And I don't know if it is the same for him but for me I usually have too many swirling and leaping and hopping. The trick is not to pursue the right idea but to be quiet and let the ideas settle out as they see fit. For me, being quiet in my mind often means moving.

Fortunately now I can walk without actively thinking about each step. I was so busy unthinking that I did not notice the young cattle stopped at the gate eyeing me curiously. Yesterday I had stopped to talk with them. One of the best lines in the Ladies No. 1 Detective series is just an almost throwaway comment about how good it is to watch cattle. I recommend it and now I have the leisure to do it without worrying about them. I took a moment to think how lucky I am before climbing the crest of the last hill and deciding that I would stop just short of the end of the road.

By now it was misty but we can have that for days without getting actual rain so I gave it no more thought than to enjoy the moist air. I threw back my hood and began to think in earnest about how the article might go when the mist began collecting in wee droplets on my jacket. I heard it pattering on the windproof water resistant synthetic surface before I felt a gentle slow moving trickle intrude on my consciousness by sliding right over that spot where Hindus put the wee dot--the third eye, the seat of our consciousness. This rain was not going to be ignored.

And so I trundled on with the soft rain drops for companions.