Pacific Northwe't

Day 34: There's a good reason you don't see a lot of solar panels on western Washington homes, and you can bet dollars to donuts that the houses with impressive roof arrays were either constructed by contractors from sunnier climes or are owned by inveterate optimists. Admittedly, climate change has extended our nice weather by a few weeks over the last two decades, but by and large, three-quarters of the year could be termed "gloomy" for want of a better word. It's no wonder that so many of us claim to be subject to Seasonal Affective Disorder. We only have two seasons: Tourist, and Miserable. The last week has been one wet push after another, sometimes blustering and blowing for variety, sometimes tempting us out of our dens with "sucker holes," those brief and small windows in the cloud cover where we may get a glimpse of near-mythologic sunlight. No one really believes there's a glowing yellow orb up there. That's as crazy as flat-eartherism. The trade-off is that we're abundantly and profusely green in hue. Our forests glow with every imaginable shade of verdure, never mind that the moss beneath our fingernails and lichens behind our ears may go a little brown during August. While our friends in other states are revelling in sunshine, when it appears here, we natives complain that it is too bright, too hot, and begin counting the days since our last significant rainfall. This, my dear readers, is the Pacific Northwe't, and we wouldn't trade it for all the beaches in California.