Whether the Weather

                        Whether the weather be cold

                        Or whether the weather be hot

                       We’ll weather the weather whatever the weather,

                       Whether we like it or not.

 

This fun speech piece has become a standard part of my workshop teaching. In the last two days (two weeks), it has been a standard feature in my life!

 

The first day of the biking trip was actually a 9-mile hike up and around three of the magnificent peaks of the Dolomite Mountains. This whole area is part of the Tyrol Region of the Alps shared by Austria and Northern Italy. All signs are in German and Italian and whole towns have two names—Toblach/ Dobbiaco, for example. The architecture is distinctly Austrian and the cuisine a mix. 

 

We took a bus up to the first of five Refugios that dotted our hiking trail and off we went. Temperature in the 50’s, overcast, but no wind or precipitation. The paths were lined with people of all nationalities— this is apparently quite a tourist destination. The views were consistently stunning and the mountains shrouded in mists that would both obscure and then reveal, a constantly shifting verb of scenery. We passed some snow in the field, felt a bit of wind kick up, hiked through slight drizzle and near the end, endured a two-thunderclap torrential downpour that soaked us through and through, with a teasing four minutes of warm and welcome sun. The cliché in some places—“If you don’t like the weather, stick around for five minutes”— must have originally come from this area. 

 

The next day was the first of actual biking and before setting off in earnest, we rode to the Grand Hotel in Toblach, which had both a nature museum about the area and a cultural center honoring Gustav Mahler, who came to this town near the end of his life to compose some of his most memorable works—the 9^th and 10^th Symphony and the Song of the Earth. 

 

And then we began. On a dedicated bike path with the road to one side and the river on the other. Slight uphill for the first half and downhill to Cortina the second half. The constantly shifting weather held true— a few minutes of sun, overcast, drizzle and then torrential rain, just at the moment that we passed a restaurant. We sheltered there for lunch in clothes as wet as if we had jumped into a pool and had an overpriced but delicious bowl of polenta with mushrooms and cheese. My one regret is that I didn’t think to bring rain pants, which would have been lightweight enough to pack and extremely useful. My raincoat was enough for the top part of the body, but pants, socks and shoes soaked through with cold rain was far from pleasurable. 

 

A respite from rain after the lunch as we re-mounted our bikes and then the torrents again just as we came into town. At the same time we were trying to figure out on phones where the hotel was. Pam and I got separated and with that cold, beating rain relentlessly coming down, finally figured out we had overshot it and miraculously made our way back to where our companions were already checking in. We indeed had all “weathered the weather, whether we liked it or not” and there was certainly an element of adventure to it that was almost fun. But we were all grateful to change into dry clothes and be inside a warm room. 

 

Today the sun is out, the air still chilly and a “day off” to do as we will. My wife went off with another to meet some people high up in the mountains, but I passed on the $30 lift ticket and early morning rising to just enjoy a day of leisure, catch up on worldly business, roam around the town (hopefully in the sun) before setting off again on the bikes tomorrow. The view out my hotel window of the newly snow-capped mountains, a balcony inviting me to write in my journal or read my book or just gaze out at the scene, a produce store nearby that will be perfect for a picnic lunch. Happy for it all.