Better in Motion

Isn't it funny how unimaginable an opposite season is when you're deep in another?

I am better in motion.

Hands so cold I try to turn the key in my front door with two paws, struggling to apply enough pressure to the final turn that will release the latch. Unable to untie my shoes: the paws, again, unable to roll down my socks. No, absolutely, no, this will not do, they will just have to stay on for my shower. The priority is heat, the priority is clean, clean the rain from my saturated form, ticking time, in no time now.

I am better in motion.

Mouth so dry the possible hydrating properties of a grass stem are appealing. Saturated with sweat, bottles sucked entirely dry, unscrew the cap and tip it in case there is even a tiny drop that might moisten the tongue. The sun’s heat still radiating off my skin as my slick sticky fingers turn the key in the lock and I don’t even take off my shoes, don’t even save the run on my watch, before pouring the coolest, wettest, best glass of water in existence. Slick down my throat, tingling my shoulders, the heat, the heat. The shower will remove it all. The water will soothe to clean. Time is not ticking. There is only time now. The heat.

The heat, I don’t even use the cold tap for the shower, don’t even open the window, I want nothing else to do with winter, not now, not ever again. So tired of it all: I had to walk the last two kilometres home, my re-waterproofed but failing waterproof doing nothing besides allowing the cold to swish against my skin, to hold it in my merino base-layer, to insulate the way I feel, to not get worse, as long as I keep moving. The cold is so close to my core. I know how this feels. I’m not there yet and I won’t get there, so long as I keep moving.

So long as I keep walking, this will be over soon.

So long as I keep running, this will be over soon.

It’s a fine line, a balancing act, it’s flirting with the dehydrated headache and should I run faster to reach water quicker, or move slower to put less stress on my body? It is sitting on a rock on the trail beneath the blessed canopy of the trees and really, being delighted with all of this. I am warm to the core, sweat stings my eyes, flies stick to my exposed upper arms. I am coconut oil and sun lotion and laundry detergent. I am zippy-eyed, when the brain is a bit woozy and can’t completely keep up with what the eyes see, even in all this brightness, this abundance of cow parsley against blue, clean green leaf against blue, the true dusty calico of the rock, the warm scuff of the mud, the tickle of buttercups and dandelions and nettles, oh nettles, how I curse them but also long for them, to see them grow strong and tall.

But before then, wild garlic, bluebells, crocuses, red kites, mating calls, running home in the light and running in the early morning in the light, are the kids outside because it’s lighter later, or can we just see them now that it’s lighter later? Possibility, hope, swimming in rivers again, lying down on the side of the trail again, just to smell the moss by my ears and squint at the twinkle of my dearest friend between the leaves. Ducklings, Egyptian geese, goslings. Moorhens and mallards sitting on the banks and being still beneath light. Before summer’s wild chasing, summer’s exuberance, summer’s internal confetti of relief and letting it all just be normal, letting a cycle home in twilight at 10 pm just be normal, be possible, letting it all be long, languid, wild and strange-limbed.

Until then, the cuffs of sleeves tucked over thumbs. Breath short, shoulders tight. This, that day, hiking up a road with drips of rain falling from nowhere down the back of my neck, drips of rain falling into my mouth, drips of rain pooling above my eyebrows. The relentless granite grey from road to sky to eye. Teardrops drip off the ends of the twigs and branches that flank my sorry hike, bubbling to consume the bud of new growth before falling to the sodden earth. I go to the soft spot in the centre of my brain and all else is external, all else is just a body in motion.

I am better in motion.

I wake in the dark, I go outside in the light. Every day the minutes get lighter. The buttercups are only waiting. The buds are only waiting. I cannot be present in winter any longer, I am better in motion, I am only waiting.