What a Day of Rain on the Camino Taught Me About the Solstice
One soaked day on the Le Puy route changed what I want to bring to the longest day of the year.
One of the longest walking days of my recent Camino came in the rain.
Not drizzle, and not a passing shower. Gentle, steady rain, hours of it, falling on me the whole day. I walked from morning into afternoon, soaked through, and I have been turning that day over in my mind since I came home, because it gave me something I did not expect.
I thought I would remember it as a day to get through.
How the rain changed the day
The rain did not ruin the day. It rearranged which parts of me were doing the walking.
On a clear day, I walk mostly with my eyes. The long views across the plateau, the trail ahead, the sky doing its work above. In the rain, the view closed in and softened, the far hills went to grey, and my sight pulled back to what was near: a single wet stone, the grass bent under the weight of the water, drops gathering and falling from the brim of my hood. The world shrank to a few feet around me, and inside that smaller world I noticed more, not less.
Then the other senses came forward to fill the space my eyes had given up.
The smell arrived first and strongest. Wet earth has a depth that dry ground keeps hidden, and by mid-morning, the whole landscape was giving it up, the grass, trees, bushes, soil, and the stones all breathing out at once. Sound came next and came near. Rain on my hood, rain on the leaves, water running in the ruts and the ditches and down the rocky stretches of the path, the whole day murmuring around me from every side. The feel of it never left. Cool against my face, steady on my shoulders, the particular weight of soaked wool and wet skin that stays with you hour after hour and keeps reminding you that you are here, in this, now.
By afternoon, I was not enduring the rain. I was inside the day in a way a dry afternoon rarely manages.
Why I keep returning to it
I have walked clear days on the Camino that I can barely call back, and I will remember this soaked one for a long time.
That is the part worth sitting with. The day I would have called a loss became one of the fullest of the walk, and it became full through the very thing I would have wished away. The rain shut down my easy sense and woke the others, and four awake senses gave me more of the day than two comfortable ones ever had. The plateau reached me through skin, nose, and ear because the rain made the usual path, my eyes, the least of it.
The fullest day was not the fairest one. It was the one I had to meet with my whole body, and it invited me to deepen how I meet and connect with the world.
How this connects with Sunday, the Summer Solstice
The Solstice arrives in two days, the longest day of the year.
We picture it as the brightest, the sun high and the light stretched long, and we half wait for it to feel like something. Most of us will meet it in ordinary life, though, at a desk, on a sidewalk, in a kitchen with the window open. No plateau, no trail, no ceremony. The day can pass entirely unmarked, the most daylight of the whole year spent without our once looking up into it.
My day in the rain changed what I want to bring to this one.
Not the most light, but rather the most attention. The longest day offers itself fully whatever the sky is doing, grey or gold, on a pilgrim road or a city block, and the only real question is how completely I am willing to meet it. The rain taught me I do not need fair conditions to be reached. I need to show up to the day with more than my eyes.
Meeting the longest day, wherever you stand in it
You do not need a route across France or Spain for this, nor do you need good weather.
On Sunday, wherever you are, give the longest day a few minutes of your whole attention. Step outside. Notice what your eyes show you, then let the other senses come forward the way they do in the rain: what the air smells like, what you can hear underneath the traffic or the quiet, what the day feels like on your skin. Let the season reach you through more than sight. The solstice is not asking you to travel anywhere. It is asking you to be fully present to the longest day you will be given this year.
A day of rain along this year’s Camino taught me that fullness has little to do with the conditions and everything to do with how completely you enter them.
Meet this Solstice with your whole self, whatever the sky decides. The light is high. Stand out in it.
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The Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate at Cherry Hill Seminary, where I teach, is currently underway with this year’s cohort. The September 2026 Contemplative Walking Retreat I am leading on this same section of the Le Puy Camino is full. New offerings, including future retreats and additional teaching opportunities, will be announced here in the months ahead. For now, the practice itself is what matters most, and it is fully available to begin today.
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It's ironic that you posted this the morning after that line of heavy storms (2 separate bands of the tropical storm, actually) crossed over us last night. At one point I stood on the front porch and leaned over the railing to feel the rain and wind - so delicious. There were tornado and wind alerts so I didn't stay long, but was refreshed. And while we are still in drought status here, the inch or so that we got was very welcome by all of us on my little domicile.
I really hear this Jeffrey, the days I enjoyed the most on my recent retreat were the windswept, cool, drizzly days on the beach, with no one in sight, that brought me alive, if that makes sense. Thank you for the much needed reminder to look up tomorrow.