If someone had told me last month that I’d be spending most of February on my Yaktrax, I would’ve just laughed. I mean, come on, the forsythia was blooming and the daffodil shoots were beginning to poke up. My January jacket selection was several levels south of maximum (that would be the black, knee-length down Marmot marvel that saw me through the 2015 polar vortex in Michigan).
Alas. That was then. This is now. And now looks an awful lot like the Midwest in February. Except it’s Seattle, and that is not computing. Blue-green horizons are obscured by iron gray cloud masses heading in from the Olympic Peninsula fat with frozen precipitation. The sidewalk is gone and the side streets are terrifying. Back in July, I wondered about the “Snow Closure” sawhorses. Now I get it. Seattle is stitched into a knot of icy slush that makes the simplest task — getting the mail, walking the dog — an arctic expedition.
And isn’t that amazing? That I live someplace so gorgeous, where the outdoors are so interleaved with the indoors that their temporary separation leaves me bereft — isn’t that incredibly fortunate for me? Even the interminable slowness of the melt is a cause for appreciation. How lucky am I to have easy access almost every day of the year to water and mountains, forests and cities, coffee and ferries, a paper on my doorstep and a volcano down the road?
I’ve leveled up on the outerwear, but not to maximum. The Yaktrax will soon disappear into the back of the closet, no longer needed for a run to the compost tote. Spring is on its way, and the city will unfurl again.
Caroline Shevrin 