Leaving home this morning, I think this might be the day we manage without rain. There are flashes of sun and a warmth in the air; maybe I won’t even need my coat. Then – a whisper of cooler wind across my cheek, grey battleship clouds moving into position above, and a scatter of raindrops in the puddles that never have time to dry. Another day, more rain.
I don’t actually mind all the rain we’ve had that much (I’m lucky not to live in a part of the country currently living under the fear of flooding). The worst of it has coincided with the days getting gradually longer again, so that even when the dull and dank skies smear our part of the world in an all-encompassing grey, there’s the relief of a bit more daylight to cling on to. It’s not quite the feeling of Arctic darkness that rain in the depths of winter can bring.
But day after day of rain does take its toll. The dankness seems to have entered everywhere and everything. My car, rarely used over the past few weeks, wears mouldy scars from the wet and cold both inside and out. Preparing for walks has become a lengthy process of finding socks, shoes and trousers that aren’t still wet from the previous – let’s just say that I’m one of those people who is better set up for fair weather walking than foul. Driving to walks has become a minefield of pothole evasion, of half-admiring and half-cursing the mini ponds and waterfalls that have taken them over.
The land also seems to struggle under the literal and metaphorical weight of the rain – it feels downtrodden, desperate for the chance to breathe and to heal just for a day, or even a few hours. I can’t remembering seeing so many fallen trees: paths blocked, rivers and streams re-routed. On one walk, so many trees were down it felt like a giant had staggered that way, drunkenly knocking down everything in its path – and the further I went on, the more I had to work to find alternative routes around, as if walkers before me had grown tired of the extra effort and turned tail for the comforts of home.
The undergrowth seems rougher and coarser. Already stripped bare by the changing of the seasons, bushes and brambles cower under the rain, a messy jumble of spindly arms and legs that fight to cling to you as you brush past.
Open fields bare the deep marks of the slips and slides of those who have gone before. What would be gently perceptible lines to follow in drier conditions are now muddy burn marks through the otherwise green, singes that get deeper and wider by the day.
In woodland, rutted tracks are more like trenches, hollowed out by the water and the desperate steps of those wading through mud that oozes and sticks. There’s a moment where I stumble into an opening – trees felled by loggers, not the weather on this occasion – which reminds me of the horror scapes of the Western Front of the First World War: deep craters filled with water, tree stumps and remains as if blown apart by shells.
Walking in these conditions can feel a chore; something that I still need to do, but to be endured rather than deeply enjoyed. My mind doesn’t sing to the rhythm of the countryside on days like these; it’s harder to find inspiration and easier to find disappointment.
Then I remember: the sudden shock of a solitary bank of snowdrops in otherwise bare woodland. How a momentary sun catches on the raindrops glued to the early buds of spring, creating an effect of shimmering snowy blossom. The crocuses and daffodils that stand tall, defiant against the rain and wind. I see new life in the hydrangeas in our garden, and I can see that spring is on its way, and that at some point soon there’ll be a renewed world to explore again in the weeks ahead.
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