Religious Experience

I think it's good to practice your religion regardless of the weather. My religion it turns out is walking. I try to walk most days as you know if you have read this blog or know me a little bit. I come from a family of daily walkers. We never went to church, we went for walks. As far as I can tell it had a similar effect on us.

Obviously it's November and the rains have come. We are in the midst of a storm. Lots of unstable air, strong wind and heavy, heavy rain. I ventured out around 12:30 today for my constitutional. It was windy and raining slightly. My favorite saying is "there is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate attire". Today I chose my attire poorly. Instead of putting on my raincoat and rain pants, I did the old, how bad could it be move and went out in hemp pants and my down jacket. I did have a hat and gloves and I did make Luna wear her coat. Luna hates her coat, she prefers to tremble. I paid for the coat and feel strongly that I know what is best for her, so on with the coat.

We went up to the... I don't know what to call it. Centennial Park I guess. The Agri-Fair grounds, what ever. There is a series of soccer, rugby fields and baseball diamonds set well below the road level. I wonder if they built it this way to prevent balls from being kicked into the road. Anyway there are steep hills surrounding the series of fields and play areas. There is even a BMX track who's sign is an oversized bike. There is a path like a miniature road that runs around the edge of the whole place complete with paving and a yellow dotted line down the middle. Once we are down at field level I let Luna loose to run. Today she was obsessed with rubbing off her smart coat. She shot up to the top of the embankment and literally threw herself down on her shoulder and onto her back, what she failed to take into consideration was the steepness of the hill and the slickness of her little coat. She slid down, head first, her long legs kicking the air. She was hysterical, trying to ditch the coat in between running at high speed driven by fast moving smells carried by the wind.

Eventually it began to pour, really pour, like there were buckets of water being thrown at us. A flag girl we had passed on our way to the park was laughing at the intensity of the rain as we passed her in the crosswalk going home. We were both laughing. At least she had rain gear on I said. I paused slightly as we passed and showed her my soaked pants peering out from under my wet wool hat and steamed up glasses. Luna hid behind me hoping to dodge the sideways rain.

By the time we got home the rain was so heavy that the eaves troughs were overflowing creating a curtain of water, our final gauntlet. I was soaked and invigorated, two components of a worthwhile religious experience.