Sun-lifted Mornings in the Pacific Northwest

In the Pacific Northwest, the mornings come heavily weighted. Overnight, moisture sifts down or seeps up and the land sits heavy with it until the morning sun, if there, gradually lifts it up, like a mother raising an injured child’s chin and encouraging her to smile. It’s why we adore the sun, the lifter of our weights.

Pacific Northwest Prophet

Of course, we could bare that heaviness alone. And most mornings we do. Striding onto the land we declare, “Here, let us help you with that,” and the land smiles, glad for the help. But it is not a burden we like to carry long and when the sun fully emerges to walk alongside, we inhale thankfully. Together we partner–land, us, and sun–to lift the weight of the Pacific Northwest morning and walk its heavy, but lifting, land.

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Wetness must be the most precious resource in the Pacific Northwest. Why else would the eco-system conspire so to trap it? After the ground hoards like jewels all wetness until dawn, morning rays lift some into mist–until bullying pines halt its ascent, like snagging a kite. Even if it escapes then, it only bumps against a low cloud ceiling. Where it mills, waiting for a blue sky opening when it races for the heavens–only to have white cloud sentinels creeping across the sky like spun-cotton combines suck them up within. It’s a moisture trap, the Pacific Northwest. That’s why it’s so green.

Heavy and green. So heavy that your knees seize up at fifty-five degrees like an engine without oil. Or your back. Or hands. It’s why you sit in the sun so long…hoping to heal.

“Oh, sun, lift our heaviness. Dance with the evergreen moisture that aims to keep us down. Let us heal and laugh and rise up together to twirl among blues and whites and, if we’re lucky, to traverse sands and tickle white waves with our toes and feel altogether that though cold, wet and heavy, this Pacific Northwest–our Pacific Northwest–is indeed grand.”