This summer my family and I were visiting my mom’s sister and her four exuberant children when we decided to take a leisurely walk through the Ozark woods. Once well into the trail, to my absolute horror, my little cousins took off their shoes and ran into the stupefyingly icy little river. Needless to say, everyone, adults and children alike, ended up climbing (for fun) almost a mile barefoot in numbing water, across slippery rocks, through overextended branches and transparent silk webs, beneath a canopy of gentle, glowing greenery. As a migration of trout or deer or Indians, we just followed the river.

Since then I don’t scamper home when it starts to rain anymore. I don’t even put my hood on or cover my face; the more I let the water in, the faster the brief discomfort of sticky half-wet clothes evaporates. Surrendering to the will of nature produces such a relieving sensation: like I can finally stretch the cricks out of my neck, yank off my blister-provoking shoes, and allow the cool rainwater to wash the sweat and lint off my feet. The rain makes me feel wild and carefree, just like crawling down the river did.

Why should I fret about my clothes and my hair getting wet, as I have so often before? It’s just water; it’s not going to make me melt or turn into an ogre at night. The concept of crawling barefoot through a river had seemed so painstaking and uncomfortable until I actually did it, the mossy stones so treacherous until I actually padded across them. And even if I had slipped, would it really matter? Petty worries and fears have too often prevented me from trying an oyster or meeting someone new or taking that small, easy hop off the bluff’s edge that sends me, in a moment of exhilarating, sheer freedom, plummeting through the air, to crash safely into a warm, clear lake.

I’d like to twist life up and wring out every last drop of water. I’d like to scoop it up on the tip of my finger and let it soak into my taste buds, but I can’t do that if I tense up every time it reaches out to touch me.

So, I believe in letting everything go once in awhile. I believe in going out in the rain, in allowing it to make my socks soggy and drip from my hair and ruin my makeup, even when there’s thunder and lightning because the lightning is beautiful and the thunder sends adrenaline through my veins to remind me that I’m alive.