This week, the northwest wind hurled rain against my bedroom window. The hammering deluge kept me awake through the darkest hours of the night as I struggled to sink into the silence of sleep.
My anxiety eased a little as I realised this year’s roof repairs were holding fast. My bedroom ceiling remained dry. But still, even as the rain relented, the wind whistled through the attic and resonated in the chimney stack. Nothing I could do would silence the noise. I just needed to wait it out.
It’s September, and the earth is turning towards winter in my part of the world. This month brings sunny days still and the chance to bask in the last rays of summer. But the calling card of a changing climate is increasing instability. Each year now, as storm season arrives over the horizon, it brings wilder winds and heavier rain.
Living with storms
“It was a dark and stormy night” is a much-mocked story opener. But, like any cliché, it holds a kernel of truth. Thunderstorms are more common in the evening as the atmosphere's humidity peaks. In the dark half of the year, high winds are more likely to be felt in the longer nights. And with only the illumination of stars behind them, clouds appear denser after dusk.
Home can feel like a place of safety in a storm. But as anyone who has experienced leaks and drafts will tell you, bricks and mortar offer uncertain protection against inclement weather. A rising flood will sweep through your house, however secure its foundations. In the end, weather always finds a way to reach you.
In my years without a permanent home, I was often in the path of a storm. I was already soaked by a torrential downpour when I lost the path through a wooded Dartmoor valley and fell thigh-deep into a riverside bog. I stayed in a rubble-built tower at the most westerly point of the Welsh mainland, where unbroken oceanic wind roared through every crevice and shook my bed as I slept. And on so many days, I found the rain inescapable. I could shelter temporarily from a passing shower, but not, as the poet Simon Armitage puts it, from “days of rain, rain that permeates the bone; personal rain, persecuting the soul.”
Walking in a storm
I have also felt the exhilaration of walking in a storm.
I have walked in the dark after the rain retreated, watching stars reappear in the sky. I have felt the wind push me back from the edge of a cliff path. I have gazed in awe at mountainous clouds stretching towards the horizon. I have danced in warm showers as thunder cracked through the oppressive heat of a long summer day.
“Sometimes,” as Tom Cox of The Villager wrote in a Substack note this week, “rainy walks - the ones where you commit to getting soaked to the skin, in a wild place, when all the sensible people are indoors - are the best walks of all.”
It can take bravery to walk into a storm, and there are times when the weather is too inclement to venture out. But when the rest of humanity retreats, you can find yourself alone in a rainsoaked, windswept world that is alive with potential.
Learning patience
Living on the coast makes me a keen weather watcher. It's a rare summer day when I feel confident to venture out without a coat or umbrella. Each morning, I check the forecast, looking for some indication of what the climate may bring to my door. I want to be prepared.
If only I had a reliable meteorological office for the storms inside me. But part of the pain of poor mental health is unpredictability. Emotional storms can arise seemingly out of nowhere, and I am often swept away in the flash flood of feelings. I can struggle to find my footing as I am knocked off course by howling winds.
What I have learned, over time, is the value of patience. Like clouds that dissolve into the horizon, turmoil inside me fades away. In a pressing rainstorm, it's easy to imagine that the deluge will never end. But moods can shift and change. I only need to hold on and wait for the storm to pass.
Walking in storms has also taught me the importance of acceptance. However waterproof a coat promises to be, rain will get in somewhere. The only way to avoid getting wet is not to walk at all. So when water dribbles down my neck, I can accept it. I want to walk; feeling the weather on my skin is part of the experience.
Similarly, I can do my best to prepare for challenging events and difficult conversations. I can prioritise self-care and nurturing practices that build my resilience. But I can't stop the storms entirely, nor would I want to. I want to be alive; feeling the emotions in my body is part of the experience.
Facing the storms inside
Walking in a storm helps me put my inner turmoil into perspective. When I experience anxiety, it’s not that I mentally time travel to the future. Instead, the future visits me in my inescapable present.
Like the wind and rain that batter my house at night, I cannot make the resulting storm inside me relent through sheer effort of will. Joanna Macy and Anita Burrow’s translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, On A Vast Plain, provides a vivid description of an alternative approach:
“Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.”
Like Rilke, I am not surprised by the force of the storm. So I bend low to the ground, connecting with what is real. Slowly, surely, the unwanted visitor of an imagined future retreats as I plant my feet firmly into the present moment.
A stormy walk can change my outlook by blowing away the cobwebs. But more importantly, the immensity of the storm puts me in my place. I can learn to accept my smallness and vulnerability. I can recognise how little is ever truly in my control. I can surrender to the storm because I am confident it will pass.
I can keep on track, whatever the weather.
So good.
Just gorgeous.