Friday, September 30, 2005
fall weather
I love the wind and the rain. Most of the time I find either and both of them exhilarating. While I was at Western (university, not prison) I would walk around campus during the fall and winter months and watch passers-by' implicit and explicit reactions to the typical weather. Most would walk with quickened pace, head down, edges of the mouth toward the ground rather than the sky. (It being this side of Washington, umbrellas were few.) I enjoyed these walks, purposing to engage those who would with eye contact and a smile.
[Pausing for an aside, I've never witnessed nor been part of anything approaching the natural phenomenons recently capturing our natural attention. I'm not talking about that level of intensity of force. I have been through several major storms (the inaugural day storm in the Puget Sound region in January of 1993, and one more recently in Buenos Aires that destroyed buildings and interrupted life for weeks in early 2002, for example), each time probably enjoying it a bit too much, but I'm not speaking to any catastrophic situation.]
I thought it perhaps peculiar to the university or its culture, this dourness I would witness. But after having lived a bit more, travelled accordingly and seldom having shied from wet and blustery opportunity, it seems to me fairly universal that pedestrians over a certain age (well below mine currently) don't enjoy the opportunity to revel in these immediately tangible forces of nature. Maybe everyone's worried about implications to their health, or traffic, or appearance, or belongings, or some other factor I've failed to consider. Maybe I'm the odd one, after all, for my cheerfulness. But either way, from the look of things outside the window, I'll enjoy the trip home more than most.
[Pausing for an aside, I've never witnessed nor been part of anything approaching the natural phenomenons recently capturing our natural attention. I'm not talking about that level of intensity of force. I have been through several major storms (the inaugural day storm in the Puget Sound region in January of 1993, and one more recently in Buenos Aires that destroyed buildings and interrupted life for weeks in early 2002, for example), each time probably enjoying it a bit too much, but I'm not speaking to any catastrophic situation.]
I thought it perhaps peculiar to the university or its culture, this dourness I would witness. But after having lived a bit more, travelled accordingly and seldom having shied from wet and blustery opportunity, it seems to me fairly universal that pedestrians over a certain age (well below mine currently) don't enjoy the opportunity to revel in these immediately tangible forces of nature. Maybe everyone's worried about implications to their health, or traffic, or appearance, or belongings, or some other factor I've failed to consider. Maybe I'm the odd one, after all, for my cheerfulness. But either way, from the look of things outside the window, I'll enjoy the trip home more than most.
# posted by kevin @ 1:52 PM 
Comments:
Of course umbrellas were few. That's how you could tell the natives and non-natives apart. My favorite part about the rain was the sound it made. There's nothing like studying in a quiet dorm room with nothing in the background but the steady rain outside. Walking across an empty campus alone in the rain was also pretty cool, especially beyond the far side of Red Square, along the pathways in front of Old Main, or walking home from Friday Night at CCF. I'm sure you'd agree Sehome Hill in the rain was cool too. Finally, let's not forget about playing soccer while being drenched by the rain. Man, I miss it all. The rain here usually comes down in heavier spurts and is accompanied by lightning or flooding, making it a bit dangerous to venture outside. Even so, I like to listen to it whenever I can.
I concur with you both you and James. Rain in the Northwest is pleasant, even romantic. Rain in the Southwest is pummeling, even wretched.
