Let the mountain rain dissolve your worries and silence your inner monkeys
It has rained most of the day. Not usually a good thing during a holiday in summer. But we’re in the mountains and these things have to be taken in good grace; it can be hard here sometimes to distinguish between low clouds and rain.
We have been before and we have waterproof jackets with us. Billy Connolly famously said that there is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing. He was talking about Scotland but I think it applies more generally.
At the height of the rain around lunchtime, I went for a walk up to a mountain chapel not far from us. It sits at a crossroads of wide paths that in winter are ski slopes. Approaching it on skis via one of the slopes is certainly easier than the slog up the steep path from below.
I stood outside the chapel and looked at the view across the narrow valley to the slopes of the mountain opposite. Looking south even higher mountains mark the site of the Col and the descent towards Briançon and the back road into Italy. Quite a view, even in the rain.
There was no wind and it wasn’t cold. And, wrapped in my appropriate clothing, it was pleasant to be standing there, alone, not quite master of all I surveyed. Master only, in fact, of the car I could see parked outside our apartment block below me in the valley.
I bought the jacket I wore when I went for a long weekend to Ambleside in the Lakes with my son back in 2010. We bought matching jackets. Mine still fits.
There are places where good weather is not necessary. I am happy to be by the sea in wet and windy weather. There is something satisfying in watching the waves smack the rocks and cliffs with hearty disdain. Even on a wide stretch of beach to hear the pounding of the surf fall onto the sand and the huge suck and rustle as the water rushes back to the deep is a reminder of elemental powers that put our worries in perspective.
The mountains have this same force; the ability to right-size things. Concerns can be regarded in their true scale. I stood on the rocks by the chapel and breathed the fresh mountain air and listened to the gentle chatter of the rain on my jacket and felt my internal voices grow silent. Even my brain monkeys stopped bickering amongst themselves for a moment.
No deep thoughts came to me. I thought of nothing urgent I wanted to say or write. Tranquility suddenly seemed more important than action or business or politics. Or worries about god knows what.
But it never lasts long.
