Saturday, February 03, 2007

This past week or so has been really difficult. The unrelenting cold, the bleak landscape, and the vast whiteness all around me have made me question how I'm going to survive the next few months here. This isn't what I'm used to. I'm used to being surrounded by green all year long. To huge bodies of blue water. To grey skies, heavy with moisture. To 200 days of drizzle followed by a brief, but stunningly beautiful summer and the loveliest warm autumn.

People who aren't from the PNW get depressed by the dark, overcast days. I never understood that because the heavy, grey rain was always so comforting to me. The weather was mild and didn't ever deter me from going about my life. In fact, there's nothing I like better than sitting in the steamed-up window of a coffee shop, looking out at the rain in the street. It's cozy.

Now I think I understand what it feels like when the weather affects your mood. This winter is getting me down. I stay indoors as much as possible because the sub-zero temperatures are torture. I haven't worn contacts in three months because they either freeze or the wind blows them out of my eyes. Looking out at the huge snowdrifts and frozen streets makes me feel panicky and trapped. It's weird how all this land can make me feel so claustrophobic, but the city energizes me. I don't know how I'd be feeling if I hadn't spent three of the last seven weeks in Seattle, with less than two weeks to go before another long weekend visit. I know this can't last forever, but it's getting to me.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yikes! I'm sorry to hear it's so cold out there. I, too, am enchanted with the rain in our lovely gray homeland. I'm not so much suffering from the arctic blast (though we'll be "cold" here tomorrow -- highs in the 20s), but I've had days where I've felt oppressed by the local weather in transplant locations. The worst was probably my first spring in Ohio, when the clouds and rain went away and the sky was cloudless for weeks on end. It was horrible.

Kaijsa said...

That is horrible. Can a person get too much sunlight? Wyoming's tourist board brags about the 300 days of sunshine per year, and they're not lying. It's tedious.

CassK said...

Take heart, the forecast calls for temps well above zero all week! The first Laramie winter is the hardest, but summer will be all the more sweet for it.

Anonymous said...

No, a person cannot get too much sunlight--at least, not this person. :-) But then, I come from the Midwest, where it is both gray and extremely cold all winter, and good coffee is also hard to come by. I love the sun. . . but I've also never been to the Pacific Northwest, so I may just not know what I'm missing.

Anyway, I hope things continue to improve down in the southeastern part of the state. . . as you can see, I'm several weeks behind on blog reading.