A gray day in Seattle.
"Why would you want to move to Seattle, it rains allll the time."
"You know it never stops raining, right?"
"Are you looking to drown out there?"
-- All general responses I received when I told people I wanted to move to Washington.
Sure, it rains a lot here. Or at least it's starting to. It was pretty rainy when I first arrived at camp, until about the start of July. But not miserably rainy. In fact, what everyone was calling rain, I would have called a sprinkle. An all day consistent sprinkle, but a sprinkle nonetheless. I could handle some days of sprinkling. Even though all of my things felt damp, as if they would never be dry again.
Then summer hit, and things turned dry and dusty. The opposite of what I expected. I started to miss the occasional rain. Especially summer thunderstorms like the ones back in New England. Occasionally, the sky would release an occasional rumble of thunder, but never followed it up with lightning or a storm or even a drop of rain. What a tease.
Now that it's fall, it's starting to get damp again. We had some days of rain since I left camp. They always, of course, seemed to coincide with the days I had to spend an entire morning in a kayak and afternoon in a canoe. Grass that had turned brown during the summer was green again, walking through camp didn't kick up a pound of dust at every step. I didn't mind it.
Now that it's practically October, it's starting to get wet. I was at camp on Saturday and it rained all day. A real rain. Not the sprinkle rain that happened in June. I looked at the forecast for the week, and it was supposed to rain until at least Wednesday. Apparently, this is the time of year when the sun says "Bye bye, see you next June!" The staff I was working with warned me that, coming from the East Coast, I'm about to get depressed really quickly. I could see this becoming a definite possibility, but I'm not going to let the rain bring me down. I spent that whole Saturday in the downpour, and while yes I was wet and cold and slightly miserable, I wasn't depressed. But one day in the rain isn't going to be the problem. It's been raining mostly since then. I still walked to the grocery store last night in a sprinkle, and walked to the coffee shop this morning under dark clouds. Without a raincoat. Taking big risks here!
I've sat in the same seat for the last hour and a half now, and had three different older gentlemen sit at the window seats beside me. All of them have commented on the weather. From the window directly in front of me, the sky has had puffy white clouds and some blue skies. The window to my left though tells a different story. Dark clouds fill the sky, and they look ready to burst at any moment. I'm not sure what happens behind the column between the two windows, but I could be in two entirely different places depending on which way I look. I enjoy looking forward more. Blue, cloudy skies. Optimism. A promise that it won't rain forever. This is the mood I'm going to try to keep up as the rainy days keep coming. Even when it's raining, it is still beautiful here. I know how great the sunny days are, I can withstand some months of rain for those moments. I hope.