Ammi Midstokke: Fair weather and the weary hearted
While I have never been accused of being a fair weather runner, I have been recognized for my remarkably bad timing when it comes to venturing out in the heart of a storm.
Case in point, the other day was a beautiful day. There was a warm autumnal breeze that gave the trees a kind of lazy waltz, their hues of orange and gold a shimmering hillside. The forest was a low, lyrical hum of laze, as if it knew it had done its work of summer and now might finally enjoy some reprieve before shedding its leafy garments for the sleep of winter.
Out of the window, I watched great white whales of bulbous clouds making their way across the sky. It had the clean blue promised between August heat haze and November wood smoke. It, too, seemed to be resting or counting cotton ball clouds with invisible fingers, rolling them from one horizon to the other.
It was warm. The cherry tomato bushes in the garden were actively producing red orbs of flavor and it was impossible to walk by without eating one or five. The grape vines were mindlessly shedding leaves onto the patio. Neighborhood cats were wandering through the gate, and finding no food just yet, lolling about this way and that way, part demonstration, part feline nonchalance.
For the past two years, I have made my way to this hillside village in Greece to hole up in a small stone cottage and write. The problem is, there is so much to see. The other problem is that the residents are affable and generous of food, drink and time. Not once in my many visits here have I ever seen a person rush, though occasionally the tavern-keeper pretends. This, he does not by moving any faster, but by complaining faster while he moves.
The locals have affected my usual need for structure and plan, not to mention my typical reluctance to day-drink. I have learned that to emerge from my dwelling is to be invited to table, and that food is never served without drink and drink never served without food. This cycle continues from the time it begins (early) until the time it ends (late) most days. I suspect the only reason they are all so healthy is because there is no village doctor to tell them otherwise.
Thus, on this day, I sat stoking a fire while I tip-tapped away and ignored the beckoning weather. It would still be there when I got outside, no doubt. And it was. By then, it was mid-afternoon and perhaps the clouds to the west had piled up behind a ridge, but so had my inertia and it was time to trot, lest someone show up with an eggplant to roast and ouzo to drink.
As I tied my shoes, I recalled a conversation with a friend here, who says he has lost his faith in humanity. While I cannot blame his lack of optimism, I could not help feeling like a disappointment, though to whom, I am not sure. To lose faith is to justify another kind of inertia: A stubborn reluctance to participate in the solution.
I had barely begun my climb up the narrow road out of the village before the first drops came, followed by a sky that blackened like a bad omen. I rounded a corner to see the wall of it tumbling over the hill, preceded by a sheer wall of rain marching down the slope like the layers of a veil that obscured the landscape with each fresh gust of wind.
I was going to get wet.
Not just wet, but baptized by the drench of it, scrubbed smooth like a river stone, possibly stripped of my clothing altogether, which had already begun to melt around me. Streams of water poured off my swinging elbows. My shoes joined the symphony with a squish-squish tempo. Someone passed me in a car, stopped, backed up, and offered me a ride through a window cracked only enough to let his cigarette smoke and voice waft out. Probably, he had an inch of water in the thing afterwards.
It is easy to have faith when things are going perceptibly well, according to one’s judgment of the situation, easy to feel hopeful when the needle moves in alignment with your values.
And it is fair to falter in a deluge of bad news, to question what we have to prove anyway, if we are of impact or even relevance. Or why the dickens we are doing a thing at all anyway.
Why run in the rain, when we can wait for the storm to pass?
To make matters worse, along with my strange ambulatory drowning, I was running uphill. It seemed to be raining up as well, but also against me, around me, beneath me, inside my ears, and over my eyebrows in tiny waterfalls of saline brow sweat mingled with the mineral of sky. If I was not slower for the climb, I was slower because I have never been a fast swimmer.
I began to wonder if my friend was right. Maybe I will die before the apocalypse and I ought embrace a nihilistic hedonism, gathering all the nuts I can find and shoving them in my own tree-well. Maybe all my volunteer hours are for naught. The tedious writing of grant proposals, the picking up of errant pieces of trash in the forest, the grace I give people who cut me off in traffic, cash donations, vocal bumper stickers, eating organic, using the public library, picket lines and letters to legislators, and these endless attempts at meaningful dialogue with the immovable opinions of others …
If I was a nihilist, then I would not have to be a runner, fair weather or otherwise. (Though one might argue that running is the meaningless-est of all.)
Just when I was ready to toss in the proverbial towel and move all my investments back into Tesla and Amazon stock, I crested the hilltop and the rain stopped.
The thick gray of troubled sky passed silently across the valley beneath me. I turned and ran down the hill, rivulets of water migrating along my shins. The sunlight burst back onto the stage like a cabaret dancer, loud and bright and nothing but sequins. From a fold in the rolling foothills, a rainbow stretched across the river gorge and planted its other end in the rooftops of a distant village.
I guess, if I want to chase rainbows, I will have to chase storms, too.
Ammi Midstokke can be reached at ammim@spokesman.com.