Parklife

I love Stanley Park. In any weather, during any season, it never fails to look beautiful. Take today, for example. Most people hate this weather. It's grey, the sky, a grey that is almost green with the sheer weight of the water in the clouds. They are so heavy they are not raining, but falling, dragged earthwards by their own vapour. They cling to your skin as you walk through them, the potential rain catching in your hair and on your eyelashes,gathering in shimmering pearls,and touching your bare skin hundreds of times a minute, each contact singular and individual- like a tiny, cold kiss.
Yes, it's damp. But it's velvety, thick and soft. The trees around me, those that aren't sleeping, feel like they are giving out comfortable, heavy sighs. The plants below them rustle though there is little movement in the air, their noise whispering around me, hinting at their secrets and protesting at the occasional droplet the falls from the branches of their sheltering tree.
Yes, it's grey. But so are the squirrels who bound across the leaf strewn grass before me, their already silvery fur made all the more metallic and magical by the light hitting the beads of moisture covering them as they rummage through the grasses, hunting for stores for winter. They give me a pointed glance as they come so close I could touch them, as if reproaching me for not remembering to fetch them nuts, and continue on their way, vanishing into the mists.
Yes, it's cloudy. But it makes the green around me so much more vibrant, the reds and yellows of the exiting Autumn so vivid that they seem to have a halo in the dim light, glowing like flames scattered untidily on the ground.
People stay in on days like this. They imagine somehow that the world can only be enjoyed in the sun. But give me the damp days, when the fog deadens the sound of the cars and the noise of the surrounding town. Give me the grey days, when the cries of the birds are uninterrupted by your world. Give me the rain, and let me watch nature use the wonder of water as intended. I will watch this beauty as the cold strikes me, and the wet creeps into my hair, and I will see the parts of this place that you would never know.