Fruity like old brandy
With hey ho, the wind and the rain:
In dozens of early letters, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe raved about walking in extreme wind. “I love it,” she wrote, again and again. A few other walkers have enthused about mud, snow, rain, darkness and cold. And yet, as the days draw in and the temperature falls, most of us hang up our walking boots.
I’m with O’Keefe. Wind is very energizing. It’s not ideal to walk in really hard pouring rain, but other than that, cold and wet are great for walking.
In the last few years researchers have begun untangling some of the little-known benefits of walking in wintry conditions. It turns out that the conditions most deterring us from taking a stroll are, in fact, excellent reasons to step outdoors.
Cities are often at their most walkable in the winter, when wind disperses pollution, and rain washes the air of dirt and germs.
No kidding. Seattle had the worst air on the planet a week ago, and then the rain and wind finally arrived (a couple of months late).
If you’re in the country, a downpour is the perfect time to walk – but for quite different reasons. The pounding of raindrops causes plants, trees and soil to release sweet-smelling compounds which then mingle and combine in the air we breathe. The Scottish writer, Nan Shepherd, loved walking after rainfall, noting that birch trees released a perfume “fruity like old brandy”.
Same same same same. If you’re in the country or if you can get to a really good large heavily wooded park you can get to those sweet-smelling compounds.
Marchons!
According to most of my students, there is NO time that is good to be outdoors. Indoors, head tucked into phone, is their ideal.
I like to walk on brisk days…windy, rainy, even sometimes snowy. It energizes. I just came back from the riverwalk, and it is just cool enough to be pleasant. I’d love it a bit cooler, but hey, it’s San Antonio, what do I expect?
I would love to walk the riverwalk! PBS has a doc about particularly good innovative etc city parks and that’s one of them.
Thanks for clarifying that you meant San Antonio; that seems to be THE Riverwalk, but lots of places call their riverfront areas “riverwalk”, including right here in Montgomery. I have family in San Antonio, maybe I’ll get out to visit sometime and go to THE Riverwalk.
I’m not a big fan of the outdoors. I enjoy it, but not enough to decide to leave the house on my own initiative. My wife likes to “just get out of the house for a while”, but I usually need more reason than that (accompanying her to “just get out of the house” is sufficient). I tend to be oblivious on walks and not notice much of what’s around me.
I have a decent stroll most days, and cold weather is definitely the best time for it. Not only for the reasons mentioned (the smell is called petrichor btw), but also because it is very easy for me to overheat in warm weather. Cold means I get to put some energy into the walk.
Plus, things just look better when fresh from rain.
I love it when there has been snowfall since the last thaw, so I can XC ski.
It never gets too cold for that. I just put on more layers if the temperature gets really low.
(I might change my opinion on that if I tried skiing below -40)
Cold is fine for walking—in fact far preferable to the DC summer sauna—but I could do without the wind.
WaM, I like the wind, but in the Great Plains, we get winds strong enough to blow me over. That’s even without the tornadoes. I do try to avoid walking during those winds, because I don’t like being blown over.
Chicago, thanks to the foresight of planners (notably Burnham), is surrounded by a ‘river of green’, forest preserves that don’t quite connect, but really do run around most of the city. They are fantastic places to stroll immediately after the rain, and I greatly prefer them in the blustery fall and brisky spring, than in the summer.
I love rain; it means I don’t have to carry my umbrella.
iknklast,
Yeah, I can see how getting blown over could ruin a decent walk.
That marvelous rain-perfume has a name: petrichor.
I too love walking in wind. Here in Southern California we get the Santa Ana, a warm, dry wind that inspires in me a feeling that I find difficult to put into words. There’s that energy O mentions, and the air feels almost electric. I’m a Los Angeles County native, and when the Santa Anas blow I feel especially connected to the land.
When the Santa Ana blows and I’m walking after sunset, my mental soundtrack is Van Morrison’s Wild Night.
https://youtu.be/VX2_HahKoe4
And everything looks so complete
When you walk out on the street,
And the wind catches your feet
And sends you flyin’, cryin’
Ooh, ooh-wee
The wild night is calling
Petrichor is specifically the smell of rain after extended dryness. Rain creates a lot of other smells, like the smells of soaked trees, soaked shrubs, mud, soaked grass, etc etc. Those smells continue, while petrichor fades away.
The best place to go here when it rains is Lincoln Park, way over in West Seattle and near the southern edge of it. It has masses of trees, many of them old growth, and the smell of rain there is just blissful.
Oh, right! I stand corrected. There should be a generic word that encompasses all the various pleasing scents released by rain.
Despite the eternal drought, Northern California had a nice storm in September! I am an obsessive cyclist, and i did one of my favorite rides (Mount Veeder Road in Napa County). the fresh smell of California Bay Laurel was intoxicating!
I think I disagree with you about rain, Ophelia. Not that walking in the rain is without merits. But it’s when it’s absolutely pelting down that it’s most fun! Half-arsed, wet-day rain is depressing. Rain when it really means it, though? Yes!
One of the pleasures of summer in Phoenix is the evening zephyrs. I lived across the street from a park preserve and a small hill was in close reach so that when I had a mind to after dark, it was a quick walk to the top of my observation point from where I could see most of the Valley of the Sun with the street lights below and the stars above. On days over 100F, the zephyr brushed against my skin, and even if it didn’t cool me much it certainly refreshed me.
Back here in Minnesota, we get some very strong winds, and this year’s October winds wreaked havoc on my political yard signs and Halloween decorations. It’s good to walk in, and fun to watch the leaves tossed and rolled about. We’ve had a dry fall (see reports on the Mississippi low water) so we haven’t had days for walking in the rain, but I like it when I get the chance. It’s one of the things of having a dog who won’t poop in the yard, Rozie needs to poop on a walk so when it’s time to walk I don’t have much choice. And I’m glad she does, even in the winter.
Enzyme, I think that applies to looking at rain through a window, but when it comes to extended walking in rain, the half-arsed kind has a distinct advantage, which is that you don’t get so wet that it’s miserable. Seattle specializes in that kind of very half-arsed slow slow slow rain. Lots of people do find it depressing but I love the leeway for walk-enjoying.
Ophelia, I definitely agree. I was caught in the pelting down rain in NYC once, and was glad of street vendors selling umbrellas. (People from the Midwest don’t tend to think of carrying umbrellas with them most of the time; we can usually be sure when it’s likely to rain.)
When I was in Oxford for a week, I got a lot of that drizzly, slow rain, and I loved it. I was prepared on that trip, being aware that England gets rain a lot more frequently than the midwestern United States. (And the conference told us to bring rain gear, because England gets rain a lot more frequently than the midwestern United States, where many of the attendees were from.)
And when I was in Seattle, I got to go up the Space Needle in a high wind, which was something less than exhilarating. Standing that high while the wind does its best to blow you off the structure is more than terrifying. But I was determined to get pictures to use in class, so nevertheless I persisted.
I like to walk. Unfortunately, I don’t walk to work as much as I used to (old age related medical issues, grrr). Summer is not as fun as winter, what with low tolerance for heat and humidity, coupled with pollen allergy. People have asked me how I can walk to work in the winter. My answer: “bundle up, walk fast.” The trick, for me anyway, is to not bundle up so much that I’m sweating by the time I get to work (or home from work). One annoyance with walking in winter is people who don’t clear their sidewalks properly.
I like walking in the rain. Back when I used to run, I also liked running in the rain. Depending on how much it’s raining, I may or may not walk to work in the rain. Don’t want to arrive at work looking like a drowned rat. In those cases, I take the bus. I’m lucky, there. One block to the bus stop on one end of the route, less than a block on the other end, shelters at both ends, 15 minutes between busses during times for going to and from work.
I also like walking through leaves, so fall is nice.
Oh, yeah, umbrellas. I remember a time, maybe thirty years ago, I went to a meeting in Reykjavík (Iceland). An older colleague had forgotten his umbrella at home, and Reykjavík being a rather rainy place, he wanted to buy one. But he could not find any store that had umbrellas for sale! Which makes sense, for Reykjavík is not only rainy, it is also very windy. So an umbrella would likely not last long there.
During an even earlier visit, I got some first hand experience of the wind and rain in Reykjavïk. On my last day there, we had the sort of wind that will not only blow you over, but blow you off to sea if you weren’t careful. But that wind was also full of raindrops. Big, heavy raindrops, each of which would hit my face with such force that it actually hurt. And I got pelted with lots of them, beyond counting. Flying out of there was quite an experience, I tell you.
Once when I was 6 or 7 I had to walk with my older sister and brother from a seaside cottage we were renting to the hotel up the road during a hurricane. I still remember the stinging pain of those raindrops in the face.
*sticks to guns*
But… but… but being out for a walk (or, as when I was younger, a run) when it’s properly stormy is a joy. You know what you’re up against, and you embrace it. It’s elemental: you against the universe, or god, or whatever.
Whereas the half-arsed stuff? That’s just you against water. Where’s the epic poetry in that?
Well I love properly stormy…and I love being out in it [unless there’s lightning, when the meteorologists tell us to gtf inside], especially high wind, but I just don’t love being out in it in soaking wet clothes. The humble pedestrian body gets in the way of gothic thrills.