Pacific Northwe't

Day 52: Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but when people ask if I like the Pacific Northwest, the first thing I do is correct their spelling. It's "Pacific Northwe't," folks. I don't know how that S got in there, but it doesn't belong. Historically, November and March are our wet months. We were close to average in November 2023 with 6.23" of rain (that's 15.8cm to you metric types), not enough to float a battleship but definitely enough to drown a duck. Even so, it's not the wet which sends us natives mad. It's the gloom. I doubt there's one person in a hundred, maybe in a thousand or ten thousand who doesn't suffer some degree of Seasonal Affective Disorder here (that's aptly abbreviated to "SAD"). I have to tell you, I'm anxiously awaiting the solstice. My mind won't register those first few extra seconds of daylight, but my body will. I'll be cheerier by Christmas than I was on the 20th, and by New Year's Day, I'll begin to consciously note that it isn't quite as pitch-bloomin'-bloody-black-dark at 4:15 PM as it was two weeks earlier. Mornings don't bother me. I'm up well before the sun at any time of year, but when it starts feeling like bedtime before I've had dinner, I get a little grumpy. Still, I kinda wish it would dry out just a little, if you know what I mean.

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.

Pacific Northwe't Geocaching

Day 227: Since the advent of cell phones with GPS capabilities, I've become less interested in geocaching, due to the fact that the majority of caches placed now simply do not take you to interesting places. "Skirt-lifter micros" abound in urban areas, squeezed into every space available under Geocaching.com's guidelines. I used to be a numbers-junkie, going out with my partner to grab 70-80 caches in a day, but that's lost its appeal. When I do go out now, I prefer to go after "paddle caches" in my kayak or to take on those with more challenging terrain ratings, especially if they are in remote areas and may require a long hike. "Better," I say, "to hike 18 miles for one five-star hide than to log fifty crummy micros."

That said, the Pacific Northwe't offers some serious obstacles even when you're hunting for a full-sized ammo box, as my partner in the sport demonstrates in this photo. I had found this cache early on in my career, but Dan had not been able to claim it before the flood of 2006 cut off access to this area. The bridge across the Nisqually was recently replaced, so he asked if I'd be willing to go with him on a search. Always up for an adventure, I agreed. I couldn't recall the exact location, but knew it wasn't too far off the road. Ah, those magical words: "not too far off the road!" Dan successfully made the find without falling in the creek, breaking a leg in the ditch or getting prickled by devil's-club, happy to check this one off his list.