Step Into Seattle

In Seattle, the seasons overlap in what might be termed "the ragged interface between seasons". There are signs of fall even in early July; here and there, leaves are dried or edged with red-gold. And yet the seasonal change won't be complete until well into winter, if at all. Some trees will not lose their brown leaves -- no, they'll stll be hanging on in March when those new little green buds form.

The average annual Seattle rainfall is 37 inches -- lower than that of several other major US cities. Why, then, does Seattle have such a reputation for rain? Two reasons: 1) A light frequent rain falls through much of the year. 2) Most of the rain falls as... well, rain. Most years, there is very little snow. While some parts of the country are having a white winter, Seattle is having a wet winter.

By contrast, there is little rain in the summer: clear skies and a stunning panorama of blue and green. Some Seattle residents joke about not wanting outsiders to know what the summers are like, lest too many descend...

The following excerpt is from a creative nonfiction piece that I wrote my first trial summer in Seattle. It was later published.

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I am standing, already, at the corner of 15th and some place I did not intend to be when a huge bus pulls up. It wears the somewhat lurid label: DOWNTOWN. I am briefly inspired. I am somewhat less so a few minutes later when, having gotten off the bus to chase an elusive coffee shop, I find myself at the intersection of Bellevue, Bellevue, and Bellevue. East.

My first full day in Seattle, I spend on random buses, asking, "Does this go to a main terminal somewhere I can get a bus pass, a bus book, and find out where I am?" Somehow I survive not only unscathed but with a library card. The following day, my aspirations are admittedly limited, but invariably I get off at the right spot. I listen to the bus driver give directions to some other lost soul, and I feel, simultaneously, a deep nostalgia and a sense of native superiority. After a few weeks, I am giving directions freely myself. I am also getting cocky, often leaving home with no more than a glance at the Metro Transit map on my bedroom wall.

I learn something each day. I see a sign "Java -$1 with fill-up" and I think "Ah, this is the Seattle of legend!" Then I learn I can have java for $1 without a fill-up; nobody even asks if I have a car. I feel like I am learning the deeper culture. A month into my visit, I get lost, not in some unfamiliar part of the city, but downtown, in streets I have known and loved for weeks. I get off the 72 at the wrong tunnel station, and there are no bus books, no maps, nothing at all to tell me how to get to my destination. I wander around for nearly two hours, as the buildings around me grow taller and more similar in appearance. Tired mentally, tired physically, and near tears, I find the nearest Starbucks and turn myself in. I feel a faint guilt. We are not barbarians in Tucson; we have had our anti-Starbucks backlash there too. Friends have warned me about this coffee establishment that starts out so charming and then tries to steal your soul.

"May I have a Frappuccino and directions?" I ask the man at the counter.

"Turn that corner," he tells me. "Follow that wall."

It turns out the stop I needed was so close all along. The whole thing was easier even than I could have imagined. Ah, the relief. Ah, the whipped cream.

Either Starbucks is not trying to steal my soul, or else they possess it already so thoroughly I cannot tell the difference...

Audio Version

Seattle is a place of water and scattered hills: the traditional home of Duwamish, Suquamish, and Snoqualmie peoples. It was named for Chief Sealth, sometimes called Chief Seattle, who is perhaps best remembered for his environmental message.

White settlers began to move into the Seattle area in the middle of the nineteenth city. Early industries included fishing, lumbering, mining, and shipping. The latter half of the 19th century saw the development of the transcontinental railroad, which brought immigrants of multiple ethnicities to the region.

A fire in 1889 devastated many of Seattle's buildings, but also led to wide-spread municipal improvements. Boom years were coming. The city experienced an explosion of growth during the Alaska gold rush of the 1890s. Dark moments of its history include the Japanese internment of World War II.

In recent years, of course, Seattle has been known for the ups and downs of its industries: the airplane industry, the computer industry -- and, ah yes, the coffee industry.

Click For Audio Version of This Piece

...I discover no less than three bookstores in the city that are inhabited by cats. I munch honeysuckle. I pluck an early ripened blackberry from a vine that still holds blossoms. On the 4th of July, I feel I should do something, but I don't know what. I wander around for a while, until I come to a bus stop with 30 or 40 people. I board when they do and get off when they do. I start walking in the same general direction as the blanket-carrying, pillow-toting masses. We're in the Wallingford district, I surmise, walking toward the water.

There are people in lawn chairs, babies in strollers, a girl with a lemonade stand playing "America the Beautiful" on a flute. Everywhere are families. There are children here who will grow up walking down these streets, parading down them, but there's one way they will never see them: for the first time. They won't descend through a cover of clouds, with everything shiny, staring, wondering if here somewhere is the answer to a question they learned, in some other place, not to ask. They'll never see their own hometown that way, but maybe some of their parents did once upon a time, and maybe, in some sense, that's why those children are here now.

I feel too young to be as old as I am. I get the sense that I'm watching all this from somewhere in the future, when this place either belongs to me or doesn't, when everything else I've ever wanted either belongs to me already or never will. There are fireworks going off across the water and on the other side of the trees; what appear to be fireworks are exploding, loudly, in the street. I can no longer distinguish the people who belong here from the imposters who accompanied me on the bus. I do know that I'm fast approaching the point in my own life when what I have is as much as ever I will have, and the only way to stop the rush is to find a firework, any one, to hold it and keep it from dissolving into the night. I'm overloaded, and it's not just my senses; it's not just the noise. At some point, I'm walking against the crowd, back up Wallingford Avenue, toward 45th Ave, toward the 44. Home. I'm still lost in a time that's never happened, and I'm singing, now, under my breath: "Son, now take a look around 'cause this is your home town, this is you-u-ur home town..."

Listen!

In January, I waited for the oak trees to drop their leaves
Signaling real winter, a hunkering down
Instead cherry blossoms flickered open in February
And daffodils showed their faces
Those old brown leaves lingered
To mingle with new brown buds
And I was aware, like never before,
Of the ragged interface that exists between seasons

Now that I know
Now that I have watched summer fall into winter
And winter crawl back out into spring
Now that I know the order in which pink things blossom
And pink things achingly fade
You ask me: was this place all I thought it would be?

And now that getting lost on a bus is no longer something to write home about
Now that my baggage has mostly all been forwarded
Where it lies waiting for me, at one post office or another
Now that I have lost and found, and lost, and fought
And made dumb mistakes that may bring winter to me yet
I tell you

Look: hail falls on a sun-faded rhododendron
All seasons exist in the white light of spring
I knew those rhododendrons wouldn't stay forever in blossom
I gave them my heart before I had even an inkling
That they would prove
Evergreen

All the pictures in this lens were taken by me. Most were snapped with a Fuji camera and later scanned at Online Coffee in Capitol Hill. Online Coffee is a place where (if you're an 'early bird') you can get a full hour of computer/scanning time with your morning coffee. Time and again, it's proven handy. I email pictures to myself, and then my netbook takes over the job...

If you want to use any photos, please attribute them to this lens, or to my blog: www.evening-nigh-reflections.blogspot.com Evening Nigh Reflections is the "EN" in TBTEN, and it shares some of the pictures.