Incessant Fall Rains

What’s with all this rain? Makes me feel like I live in a gnome zone. I just came back after a wonderful week in the Bay Area.  Every morning I saw the sun rise outside my bedroom window and if my sister was already up and her door was open I could look to the west to see the Mt. Tam dressed in morning hues.  Everything looked so colorful, the fall tress dressed in oranges and gold, the air clean and blue forever. Not a cloud in the sky.

I would take a walk along the lagoon and although the air was cool enough for a sweater, walking into the sun was warm.  The early morning Marin Rowing Club members were skimming across the flaccid water in their skinny boats.  Cattle egrets skipped along the shore looking for worms and tiny fish.  Old eucalyptus trees trying to shed their bark in strings reflected the pink pastels of the early morning.  How I love this climate!!

Now I come back to the northwest and wonder why I live here in the winter. It is dreary; overcast with a constant drip of fall rains washing off dead leaves of summer past. The sidewalks are slick, the storm drains over flowing and the temperature hovering around 40 degrees. I truly feel like the winter gnome, the tiny knurly creature hold up in a small cave poking her nose out to test the temperature and

humidity, scooting back into her snug abode, not venturing out into the sloppy transformation from fall to winter.  I long for sun. I long for warmth.  I long for none interrupted blue sky.

Does this come with old age?  Wanting to become a snowbird, fleeing to the desert with all its splendid dryness. This sends me to the Internet to look for rentals and I start with Tubac.  An old casita that was once the home of the postmaster is now owned by a “well known novelist” and one wonders why he/she wants to rent a place where they could write away unencumbered by big sloppy city life.  It is less space than my own place, but with outside seating on a patio in the sun, mind you, would be heavenly.  I really find this dreariness of Seattle like a very heavy cape, dragging me down, buckling me to my knees, and too heavy a load to move around. I really must get a grip and change my mind.  Things could be worse I guess I could be living in Iceland with only five hours of sun this time of year.