Today’s Miles: 25.9
Total Miles: 860
Sulitjelma – August 6, 2016
The sky is grey and low. Clouds press down among the mountains, cutting off the peaks and suffocating the horizon. The sun is lost behind them, its light filters in, dull and hazy, never enough to warm the air. I watch, waiting, expecting to see grey sheets of rain.
I pass an older man, his silver hair tied back in knots that hang over his backpack. I mention the chance of rain and he shrugs it off. He looks up and smiles at the low clouds.
“It’s good temperature for walking,” he says.
I look up too and nod. It is a good temperature. The cool air makes you want to move, lets you push without sweat pouring off you. It’s the kind of air you can walk for miles in without stopping.
I think about his words as I climb toward a pass. The cool air, the low clouds, the way he didn’t see them with fear of rain, the way he saw only the chance to walk without sweat running down his skin.
I realize I don’t need to fear the rain either. It’s battered at me again and again, day and night, but here I am, 800 miles from where I started, still alive, still pressing forward.
The rain just is or is not, nothing more. Why fear it? I can’t change the rain. I can only change my perception of it.
Predictably Lost 
So much of life is perception. It is when we finally understand that all perception (the way our brain perceives things, ideas and concepts) can be changed in an instant that the human potential begins to unfold. Enjoyed your thoughts D. Rain has always been one of my “El Guapo” (See The Three Amigos).
Just trim the hedges!
Good thoughts all!
I’m glad for you to have cool weather to walk & not sweat. Here we simply stand and sweat. Yet the musing is the same…it is what it is. Our perception is all we can control.