Music and Mountains, Rain or Shine

The weather has been relentless this summer - exactly opposite of summer weather, wet and gray when instead in a perfect world it ought to be dry and golden light. In the fleeting moments when the sun peeks out from time to precious time from the low dark clouds I run outside to squint my eyes and feel a bit of sun on my face. I do. I am seeing photos of others on beaches, basking, and it looks so foreign, like another planet where there is hot sticky summer worlds away.

A couple weeks ago we decided that this was just it - the rain - and we'd better deal with it and get outside anyway or else the snow would be here before we knew it and then it'd be a whole different story of ice. So we've been sucking it up and packing the rain gear and just going outside to be outside. Rain or shine.

Like last weekend: we'd read that it was supposed to be sunny south of here, on the Kenai Peninsula, and we flew south. Not so much - mud and water and very wet brush like horsetails and fireweed as we hiked through the meadows and trails on the way to lakes and mountain tops, soaking our pants that would not dry over three days of trying to dry them in the tent and near a campfire.

It was very nice to get out despite the cold humidity exacted and the exertion expended. The surrounding mountains and lakes and rivers and wildlife that we have near us are always out there, even in rain, so beautiful and available to be seen like some enduring and hard-hitting, but ultimately beautiful and human, documentary film that stays with the viewer for years whenever you can bring yourself to watch it. I already mentioned night one and night two, and then Sunday when we packed up camp we hiked up a mountain trail and it was HARD for me. I'm not in ideal shape, but I still feel like I will not, cannot give up, so I trudged through the pain and I whined a few times on the way up on these endless switchbacks, clutching my sides and breathing hard. One of the terrific things about my husband is he just lets me whine and then he says something like, "Alright, sweetie, are you ready to keep going now?" And as much as I want to say "no" I do because he loves this and because I love him, I endure it. We summited and I was indeed, breathtook - bare rocks above the treeline and we could see the wide, too-turquoise winding Kenai river emptying in the lake below via a crazy monkey puzzle delta, slim creeks snaking into the lake, snow spotted mountains all around and maybe two volcanoes, which I'm not sure we actually saw on this gray overcast day. We did watch bald eagles soaring on the wind, they were below us.

One of my favorite parts of going somewhere is the music in the car on the way there, singing looking out the window at everything passing for now that will repass again coming back, feet beating downbeats up on the dash, hands keeping time on thighs. There and back and in the week before we left I'd been constantly listening to this Florence + the Machine album - sort of Lorena McKennit with drums, or Stevie Nicks more adamant, and I'm guessing influenced by both Tennyson and PJ Harvey (so my cup of tea), and it became my personal soundtrack. It was uncanny how this music proved to be so apropos while hiking trails and ascending mountains. I'd be breathing hard, stitch in my side, other hikers coming up behind and there was NO WAY they were passing me and I'd hear in my mind these words from Rabbit Heart: "I must become a lion hearted girl.../ This is a gift/ It comes with a price!" And I'd think, yes yes, it is and it does - keep going, self, get up there and pay for this gift of health and vistas. Later, going up a mountain, calves wanting to burst with lactic acid and my soaking head pounding, I'd pause and hear these lyrics from Between Two Lungs: "The air has filled me head-to-toe/ And I can see the ground far below/ I have this breath/ And I hold it tight/ And I keep it in my chest / With ALL MY MIGHT/ I PRAY TO GOD THIS BREATH WILL LAST!" I know. Perfect.