It was a mad and gloomy walk, though less than Abraham and Isaac’s.

I had to get back to that patch of dirt, now mud, in the thunderstorm.

Crackling random nearness of the lightning bolts. Warm, demanding, saturating rain.

In cars growing up I would ride with a friend and we would chase down thunderstorms, what a cool way to die, we’d laugh, but we meant it.

Had a lightning bolt struck the car, BARROOMMMED next to us, us teens, we’d have been as blissed as panicked. Up hillsides we’d be close to eye level with the storms and sidle up to the churning forces. Hey.

Harrumphing now, as a man, in my mad and gloomy walk through the deluge I knew I would prevail on the way there, I would get there like a salmon to its ground unless nature escalated. I reached the patch of mud, once dirt, and knew it would be dirt again. I stood on my place. Mine. I would likely never return to it after looking around this last time. Over my shoulder, with a nod bequeathing it to all others in existence by my grace. The gusts and the light and the drama and bursts of rattling noise and the blanketing rain and the ripe damp saturation of everything made my mind quiet. Nothing left to keep dry. My thoughts and wants and memories and wishes no longer had to crackle and rumble and whisper and whoosh – the world was that all around me. Thoughts were a stone on the surface of the water, above the ripples.

Clothes including the boastful, now hubristic waterproof Gore-Tex jacket were soaked and so pointless the only thing keeping them on was modesty.

I still like walking in inclement weather. Boastworthy in a “How’s the weather?” chitchat the day of the walk. But mostly a leaning forward into hard circumstance. Make things wild and harsh, dear Nature (within endurable measure), and grant an interval of peace within.