rain and mountains

A couple of days ago I went for a late afternoon walk with K. It soon started raining and we ended up getting entirely drenched. We walked miles along empty dirt roads, over the bridge across the river past cow paddocks, mango trees, bamboo clumps, farm houses.  The road finally ended at a cattle grid and a gate.  We were as wet as if we’d swum in our clothes. We walked all the way back to her place chilled and  shivering. Our two children - my son, her daughter - had been delivered home from orchestra practice while we were out. They were curled on her sofa reading TinTin books. 

I had been a bit miserable earlier in the day. That diffuse grey Life is futile/ everything is too hard/may as well eat more chocolate mood that descends on me from time to time. Which dovetails with overwhelming despair about the appalling things our species does to the planet and eachother  and my fear for the future. 

After our walk I realised that my mood had  changed. The rain washed away my gloom, rinsed it off my body.

I once heard someone at a talk with a Tibetan monk ask about what to do when you are depressed. The monk said that in Tibet, a depressed person (not that they had a word for ‘depressed’) would be taken to the top of a hill or mountain, some place offering a wide view,  to put  things back in perspective.