Winter

The seasons changed three days ago. We went from blue skies and 90-degree heat to a constant cloud cover, 50 to 60 degrees, and sporadic drizzling (they call it “rain”). Apparently this is what we’ll have until around April.

Before the change, I had almost decided that Seattle wasn’t that weird after all. Really, the vegetation looks a lot like what I’m used to in New England, and the cities are more or less California-style. I had even found myself thinking, “It doesn’t really look like Twin Peaks around here…” Actually, most of Redmond and Bellevue looked pretty boring; I couldn’t quite remember why it had seemed so exotic during my early visits.

No longer. With the solid grey sky forming a ceiling overhead, the once-bland office buildings are suddenly an imposing presence, their white stone seeming almost like an extension of the clouds. I wonder if the buildings were deliberately designed to complement the grey sky; what seemed before like indentical buildings now each have an individual character. The trees lining the streets only serve to emphasize the finite space between the ground and the roof of the sky. The cool weather lets you see everything a little more sharply, and the lack of birds lets you hear more clearly, to slow down and notice how the Redmond streets all have wide sidewalks with no one walking on them, how the streets, although they individually twist and turn, always come together at nice right angles, how the traffic lights are a little too regularly placed, how the street signs are too big. Last night was an almost-full moon, and by 8 pm it was pretty dark, so all I could see out my window was the moon shining through too-tall pine trees. Yeah, it’s weird out here.