The walk after rain
Why the half-hour after a summer rain is the most generous time to walk a forest path.
There is a window of about thirty minutes after a summer rain when the forest is doing the most. The window opens when the rain stops. It closes when the wet things have dried, which depends on the temperature and the wind but is usually around half an hour in mid-July. If you are inside when the rain stops you have a small choice to make and the choice is whether to put on boots.
I almost always put on the boots now. I did not used to. I would sit by the window and wait for the puddles to dry. The puddles take two hours. By then the window has closed. The forest is doing something else, and you have missed it.
What the window is
It is when the wet things release their smell. Soil after rain has a name — petrichor — and the smell is real and chemical and it comes from a compound called geosmin that is produced by soil bacteria. Wet bark has a different smell, woody and slightly bitter. Wet leaves have a smell that is closer to a vegetable than to a flower. The forest after rain smells like all of these at once, and the smell is at its strongest in the first thirty minutes.
It is also when the small creatures are most visible. The slugs come out. The snails come out. The frogs that live in the small pond near the eastern edge come out, briefly, and you can see three or four of them at once, which is otherwise rare. The birds that hide in the rain come out. The light, refracted through the still-wet air, makes everything look both clearer and softer.
On the boots
You need waterproof boots and you need them ready by the door. If you have to go and find them, the window will close. I keep mine in the small alcove by the back door, with the laces loose enough that I can step into them in twenty seconds. The boots are not expensive. They are the cheapest waterproof walking boots I could find, and they have lasted four years of this practice.
If the small things on a forest walk are what you love — the smells, the snails, the wet light — then the window after rain is the time to walk. It is one of the most generous half-hours nature offers. It costs you only the boots and the willingness to step out before the puddles have dried.