Hello, all…

…it’s been awhile, huh?

Seven months is a long time.

I don’t really have a good explanation for my hiatus. I could pull one from the air, sure, but it’s a poor show when the magician makes an excuse for vanishing himself…that kind of scene is a waste of time.

“Voila.” The act finishes. The missing performer’s disembodied “ta-da” is muted by an empty stage. One or two people clap uncertainly.

Bah. There are better stories to tell.

For those who remember, I’ve been in WA these past months. I came here for programming school and mountains, exposure to tech as well as a different region of nature. Thus far the experience has taught me two things: first, how to talk to computers, and second, that the hearsay about the winters up here is true — short days, long nights, lot of dark and just a little light.

I can say for starters that hours of computer programming linked to long hours without sunlight are two things that come together with varied results.

One: I know how to build websites.

Two: my skin is now so white that it’s bordering on bioluminescent.

Conclusion: I’ve become a tech savvy vampire.

Learning to use web technologies has been a journey. A journey, which for me, revolved around remembering how to tap into rational thought processes that have been long dormant in my mind. Like math. Hadn’t really used math for years. Couldn’t work the register at Target. But it’s hard to write programming algorithms without basic arithmetic. For those interested in the technical programming skills I’ve learned and am continuing to explore, I’m devoting another section of the website to posts about this material. Those of you more than happy to not chase this particular white rabbit can rest easy, I won’t bludgeon you with heavy, web design rhetoric.

Instead, I’ll talk about Washington in the wintertime.

During winter this far north the tilt and curve of the earth comes into play. The deeper you venture into the northern hemisphere the farther from the sun you go. It seems odd that some people are pulled to regions like this. I’m one. I’ve always considered myself drawn to the dark. The night is my time. It‘s for laying back against weathered boardwalk planks, looking up at a sky that seems bigger than the world. If daytime heat makes everything boil, night is a simmer.

Some people live for that simmer, although most choose to keep quiet about it. Loving the sun is one thing. The dark, though, is something human beings associate with silence, stillness, uncertainty, fear. Admitting that you savor the dark is anathema to people who as children had nightmares about some shapeless mass oozing out from beneath the bed to swallow them up. And that’s the majority of us. A love affair with darkness feels like a love that’s meant to be kept hidden. So my fellow nocturnals and I generally keep quiet.

There are a few of these among the Washingtonians I’ve met, who by and large are an eclectic bunch. Especially around Seattle. Seattle, like all great cities, forces its people into conflict with each other. The kind of social Darwinism that takes place here molds them to shape. The result is a swell of personalities that are strong and scarred and distinct in a thousand and one ways. But there are two things common to all the people living here:

First, they’re terrible drivers. I don’t understand why. It’s inexplicable. The roads are laid out with all the professionalism of a master city planner. There’s traffic everywhere one goes. And navigating traffic is harder than navigating lonely roads so one would expect these people to be master drivers. But they’re not. Gods, it’s a terror going two miles to the grocery store. I have strong suspicions that the huge foreign presence has got something to do with the matter. Stereotypes often make caricatures of the truth, but most times they do revolve around something with substance. In this case, the idea is that the driving habits of foreigners don’t mesh well with a rainy, crowded American city. I’ve tested the theory, it seems true.

The second trait they all share is something I’m envious of: they’re impervious to the dark. I picked up Vitamin D supplements from Trader Joes the other day because I hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. The clerk laughed and said I hadn’t acclimated yet.

She’s right. I like the dark, but I’m not certain I can live in it.

I can, however, deal with the seasonal flip-flop of the Pacific Northwest if it means being able to get to the mountains when the urge hits. And sometimes it hits strong. I’ve been to a couple different ranges in the past months. The Ozarks in Arkansas. The Sawtooths in Idaho. But the Cascades are something else. This far north they’re snowcapped half the year and on clear days they go on forever into the distance.

In October most trails were still passable and, for whatever reason, sparsely peopled.

At the edge of December, Ranier was under four feet of snow. A friend and I managed to snowshoe a short way. Emphasis on “short.” We envisioned walking lightly on top of freshly fallen snow, but what we soon discovered was that 52 inches of fresh powder was more likely to swallow a person whole then support their weight. Ten feet was tough. Two miles was herculean. It would’ve taken all night.

Now all these ways are filled with mud from early spring rains, partly-hidden in fog.

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In a few days here I’ll move again. This time to Los Angeles to write a new chapter in my story. And while the notion of leaving behind the friends I’ve made here is bittersweet, I recognize this: we’re young and the world is wide and there won’t be a better time to see it. And maybe, if we cherish our shared memories enough, the desire to make new ones will pull us back together someday. Desire, after all, is the most sacred kind of gravity.

— Nomad