If you could choose, where would you be?

If you could choose, what would you love to do?

If you could go where you really want to go, how soon would you leave?

From where you are right now, look around and also in that only-known-to-you place inside yourself, and tell me: Are you where you want to be? Are you doing what you want to do? Are you with the people you could not be without?

And if you say no, how far back do you have to go to find the roots of that no? Did you choose a no from the beginning because you told yourself you won’t follow any dreams, or you just stepped out into the world holding a dream like children hold kites, and it got all tangled up and then you dropped it because others said it’s too hard to untangle it and even if you do, the wind might not be there by the time you’re ready to go again…Did you go from making your own path – and not even thinking you’re making one after, because you were flying your colorful kite, and joy allowed you to go far and be strong because that’s what joy does – to being told you have to follow a path that’s already there? Whose path? Did you ask? Did it matter?

We follow paths that are there just because some people (or many) walked them before us. They called them the right ones, and we dare not say otherwise. The paths we follow feel the opposite at times; sharp disobedient thoughts sprout, carrying all those gut feelings that may not agree with the beaten path. They poke through and scare us to a halt. Don’t walk here, there is nothing here. The sides are bare, better go back to your own…They urge us to stop, to look around, to be honest.

Stop? Now? Stubborn thoughts grow like thick trees with many branches we don’t know how to climb and don’t dare believe we can learn. So we cut them down and tie them with thick silent ribbons. There. Then we keep going. Silly thoughts, trying to make you stray…But what if the thoughts are right? What if? Ah, just cold flutters that try to stop you, they happen, people say. They happen to everyone, they say… Keep going.

But is everyone happy then? Yes, no. It’s hard to see the truth in mirrors that copy each other. Which one reflects the truth, there are so many… Ah, just pick one. Is it a game? Hide-and-seek? Yes, with yourself, the silly thoughts point out. Hush again, let me look in that mirror. And you see what you’re told you have to see.

Because when you want to see things a certain way, you tilt your head until they look like that. You might be upside down and hurting, but you keep at it because everyone else does it. Or so it seems. You look at it and say yes, it is like that, and pretend to not know the truth. But you see, even blind people who’ve never seen faces in their lives, they can “see” faces. They feel them with their fingers and know what the face looks like. They trust their fingers to see for them. Even if you’ve never seen the path, your real one, you’ll know what it looks if you dare let the fingers of your soul “see” it for you.

But to dare… We follow paths that don’t hug our soul. Instead of soothing our fears with the joy they allow us to have along the way, they feed it and make it into a wild mean beast we drag along; one that we try to run away from but pretend to be too slow to do it, and we let ourselves be bitten by it once more…Until one day when the wild beast bites too deep, or too soon after the old wound barely closed and then the pain makes you stop. If you take the time to be mad at the wild thing that’s biting your hands, and if you take the time to care for your wounds, then you might just have time to look around.

You don’t quite know where you are, you’ve come a long way. Why are you there? Is there another way? Better, harder but truer? Is there a how to? Where does one start? The beast you dragged along, you let it go. The many knots that tie your fear to your soul, you dare to hold them up and peek at their inelegant mess; most scary. Where to from here? Sigh,cry, stomp your feet, but no more knots please. You hold them up and the sun peeks at your soul right through them. Warmth feels right. Now you know how messy the knots are, but you also know that sun can kiss your soul through that mesh of fear. Rain could get it soft and manageable until the knots fall off. You know that.

Then you walk around. Light and brave, you go off the path, into a place where you’ve never been before. And if you give yourself enough time to smell the air, and enough courage to listen to that part of you that speaks the only language for which you do not need a dictionary, you might just remember the truth of the journey you started a long time ago…

The journey that started with a dream. Or many. You dreamed of where you’d go if one day you could, you dreamed of what you’d be doing if one day you could, you had joy and you knew that it would be worth it. You were ready to cut your own path and make your own music and you didn’t care that you did not know how to or that it might get tough. That was part of it. You were ready. But then someone said that’s crazy, what a waste of time. Take this path, they said, no need to build wings when you can walk. So you took the path.

But if you did, was it the right one? Right and wrong are but rigid measuring sticks, you say. The question is: Does it feed your soul? Where you are now, what you do, the starting of each day? Does it? Is the path you’re on the one you’d choose if you could choose all over again?

If you could choose all over again, would you choose to do what you do now?

If you could choose where to be, would you be where you are now?

If you could choose, what would you choose? Would you really?

Rain has so far been a luxury in Kamloops. The smell of rain has always brought stories and memories of places and people.

On the coast, rain is as familiar as the air you breathe. You wake up in the morning, it’s there. Go by your day, in and out of the house, rain is there. Come nighttime…Well, it’s there. Yet though I lived in Vancouver for almost 14 years, I have not come close to disliking the rain, endless drizzle that it was at times.

Here though, rain is short and precious.

I never quite understood the grumbling about it either. Whether we grumble or not, rain falls until that last drop will be squeezed out of every grey cloud. Unless the wind picks up and scatters them like dandelion fluff in all directions.

The wind has been sweeping the skies for a couple of days now, and ever since the sky turned clumpy with clouds, I kept thinking rain is but a hill or two away. Not yet?

As if to taunt the sky, I put some laundry out this morning. Why not, if it’s all a big tease anyway. Then I went for a long run.

Half an hour later, the wait is over. A few drops to start with. The smell of rain-thirsty pavement and grass is thick and plenty. As if shy about taking over the air, rain picks up ever so slowly. The hills around are dressed in rainy fog and I know we’re next.

Full-on rain. How perfect. An invitation to press on, because you don’t just stop mid-run when rain starts.

The next five kilometers or so, rain comes from all directions and it has no intention of slowing. Plump drops land on my face and I like it. I’ve always liked rain, even more so because of its scarcity.

As I run, my mind splashes in all those memory puddles countless rains left behind.

I think of how so many times during my childhood I’d climb in one of my quince tree retreats and listen to the rain; seduced by the cascade of pitter-patter sounds and fascinated by the glistening trails of water drops left on the leaves.

I think of a camping trip up in the mountains where it rained almost icicles for days. It was early June. It was cold, but that rain made the trip memorable and did not stop me from subsequent ones.

I think of the boys relishing every rainy walk we had. The rain curtain would reveal a whole new world every time. Earthworms chased out of their dirt shelters by the water and perfect half-spheres of sparkling rain on leaves. We stopped for each of those.

“How does the water stay like that mom?” I have yet to meet a kid who, given the chance to observe rained-on leaves, would not stare in wonder. “Look, everything inside the water blob looks bigger.” If learning would happen like this, no kid would resent sciences. Neither would adults.

Many of those walks took twice as long and before we went back in we had to empty the boots. They were filled to the brim. From splashing as if that was the last rain ever. It wasn’t.

We camped in the rain many times and the sound of raindrops licking the tent fly made for a perfect late night tune. Plus it makes one quite good at starting a campfire with damp wood.

With all the rain today the ground is too dry for any puddles to form. It’s cold and the back of my hands feels numb.

A few minutes later, over Peterson Creek Park, the clouds are rolled to the sides to reveal a sky so blue it puts the very color to shame. The air turns balmy and I decide to keep running just to have some more of it. Warmth brings on its own magic touch.

By the time I get home sunshine glitter is all over the streets and the wind has weakened to a gentle swaying of the trees.

Later in the backyard, laundry is dry. Towards the east, dark clouds are stomping their long wet legs over the hills yet again. More rain to come perhaps. I take the laundry inside; taunting can only go so far on a day like this.

As if it reads my mind, the wind picks up and twirls dry petals high over the porch. Some make it into the house with me. The laundry smells of wind and sunshine.

A few hours later, in the west, some thin long clouds pile up over the horizon like tired pencils after a day of drawing in the sky. Their cloudy scribbles spreading all over the city will be drenched in orange sunset glow soon.

It’s been a beautiful sunset and we walk up the hill crest to see it all.

(Originally published as a column in the Saturday edition of the Kamloops Daily News on May 18, 2013)

A week or so ago I signed up for a race: The Blackwell Dairy Run, taking place in Barnhartvale on May 26th. I was thrilled to have found a race I like, a first after I broke my leg and twisted my knee. I biked in Barnhartvale and I loved it.

The race is a hilly one I was told afterwards. So be it, I said to myself. I am a decent runner. I am not a lover of hills but oh, the things we can change when the mind wants to and gets busy… So I set my mind on the busy setting because time is short and hills must be tamed.

I changed my training regimen from running on mild hills and mostly flat surfaces to running mostly hills. I checked out more details about the race and it looked like a good race with some speedy people and… OK, it is fun to compete, why not.

My morning runs got longer, hillier and I was once again about to discover that the part I dislike more in a hill is the descent. But unbeknownst to me, the uphills had a dark side that was about to become a pain in the …foot.

That’s right. The top of my foot started hurting and I realized that I could not even walk on a hill without hurting let alone running. So I gave it a day, perhaps the laces were too tight or I needed the other running shoes. It’s good to rotate them, they say.

Nope. Pain was still there. Now I know that it is called extensor tendonitis. It happens when you run hills extensively. It takes a while to heal (weeks at least), it hurts if you try to run or even walk fast, the pain extends in the foot and even crawls up the shin and… That’s when you know you have a royal mess. No race, which is disappointing, but no running either for a while.

So I messed up. I wish I didn’t. I will miss my early morning runs and saying hello to the sun as I make my way to the Peterson Creek dusty trails. I will try to walk early in the morning instead and still say hello to the sun. At a slower speed, which means I will have more time to look around and be grateful for the morning. For each morning that is. It’s amazing how we can bend things out of (bad) shape when we set our mind to it.

So I messed up. And learned something I should’ve known. And added yet another tiny regret to that hidden bouquet that only I know about…