The rain drifted in misty showers during my lunchtime walk up and back down the hill. I guess it's about a mile and a half, although my only measurements are my footsteps and breath and time passed. The trees are big Douglas firs and Red cedars, maples just budding out, massive Oregon oaks still bare from the winter's cold. From the top of the hill I can see the river winding like silver through the town and the swath of forest below in the grey rain. An osprey's huge jumble of a nest sits atop a big broken fir at the highest point of the butte. Narrow paths drop away from the main trail, steep muddy slippery downslopes into the underbrush that I long to follow. I have before and will again go bombing down the backside, limbs akimbo hair wild, but today my time is not my own.
And it is raining.