A vast empire aloft spending weeks slowly migrating above the sound. A vast ethereal continent of mountains, valleys, plains, dales, and trenches, though to us below nothing but an endless horizon of nearly featureless gray, broken by the occasional window to a stolen spring above.
Every day the promise of rain rarely met, until Friday. Waste time and drink coffee. Look out the window and think about the plan, which included seventy-six miles, a very ambitious daytrip. Think about almost half of those miles on dirt, now surely thick mud. Eventually decide to give it a shot and saddle the bicycle in the heavy wet air. The rain, of course, a promise. The redolent roadway and sodden sky are easy signs to read.
A muddy shortcut in the park.
Shortly after, on the burke-gilman, the rain comes. Like breathing, drawing in and out harder and softer. Pull out the raincape, neatly rolled on top of the bag already. Slalom around retirees proving their pluck in expensive goretex. Stop and see the pink cascades in the distance barely visible, dwarfed by the tiresome gloom of the past week.
Follow the trail and meet the Sammamish river, little more than a slow dirty trench in the northeastern suburbs. The rain continues to insist and you find your will slowly ebbing: riding in the rain is, at its core, an entirely un-enjoyable activity. It is something to remember in the hot sweat summer with a kind of nostalgia. At work watch the few pedal by in the rain and feel a twinge of jealousy: riding in the rain they may be, but they are riding in the rain. You should envy them. This is forgotten when you are riding in the rain: cold water seeps into the wool and onto your skin. Through the shoes, into the gloves. Onto your glasses. Finding every weakness, every chink. Cold water is undefeated always.
Around the hill the river goes, into its domain the valley. A swaying river of green with a lake at the bottom. Stop at a trail junction and see how miserable you would be, and choose instead to drink beer in a nearby brewery.
One cup of burned coffee and two beers later the sun is out. Turn the bicycle around. This ride is over. Going further is to invite misery into your life for no reason, so go home. Huge dark skies above either ridge, but the valley itself so bright it nearly hurts your eyes after the days of darkness. A friendly wind blows you up along the valley, a gentle nudge allowing you to turn a 95inch gear with slow ease. Stop and listen to the tall trees whisper in the wind.
Stop on a bridge and see a tree fallen in the water. Watch as it gives birth to dozens of perfect tiny whirlpools, flowing in a little line downstream out of sight under the bridge. Hear the wind and see it blowing across the water. Watch and listen for ten minutes, then twenty. See the huge dark above get closer and closer, know that the little morning rain is followed by its bigger, angrier cousin. The hugest, darkest skies you've seen in a long time. Now watch two ducks fight the current: heads far forward on stretched, strained necks. A second of rest erases ten of hard effort. See them give up and take flight an disappear around a bend in five. Now the rain is here.
After a tunnel the rain is a joke. You cannot but help but laugh at this awful deluge. The skies above are playing a trick on you. The world becomes a fuzz behind a million gallons of water. Keep riding. Your raincape, so effective in the short commutes in the light rain, is a token now. A talisman you have invoked against the idea of getting wet, a symbol of shelter and nothing more. Wet body swathed in heavy wet wool wrapped in a wet piece of nylon.
Back along the trail the way you came, only now the skies to the west are perfect clarity. A window to the beautiful day that does not belong to you. The darkness over the hills makes a more immediate impression than the sun-dappled pathway spread before you.
A wet failure of a day whose only bright side is pulling on a fresh pair of dry wool socks.
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