Friends moving away is a terrible thing, but being the military, we’ve done it enough that we can’t TOTALLY judge other people who do it. So instead we try to hold them to the rule that if they MUST move, they need to move somewhere beautiful where we can visit.Thankfully, some good friends that moved from Hawaii followed that rule and then some, and we got to visit them at the end of our mainland trip a few weeks ago.
We had been to Seattle before, but two hours north and right below the Canadian border was totally different. Seattle is right on the edge of the mountains, but here is right in the middle of those mountains and on the edges of several bodies of water; lakes, tributaries, and the Pacific.
I don’t know what the place is like in other times of the year (even our trip to Seattle five years ago was in October/November), but this was just about the right time to be there. It was chilly but not cold, and the turning leaves highlighted the dark valleys and weren’t dimmed by the falling rain, and the mists stream over the water and through the mountains.
The boys delighted in playing with their old friends and we delighted in the views, so much colder then Hawaii, and yet not too different.
Here, the rain still keeps the woods green as a jungle, and the mountains still surrounded us. The waterfalls were shorter but just as plentiful.
And the moss that covered everything around and up to them was the same bright green.
The ocean was grey instead of bright blue, but it was just the other edge of the same ocean we see almost every day, and this trip meant we had visited or lived near every edge of the Pacific from the eastern edges in Japan to its bright tropical middle here in Hawaii, to the white waves washing over dark rocks here in Washington. It seems to always be the Pacific with us, but it is so different from place to place that you would never know each place is merely a different part of the same giant, constantly moving body of water.
Any place we go, whether or not it’s a strange or familiar place, it’s good to be able to trust that there is nourishment there; in the form of beautiful scenery, old friendships, and even some wild apples in the woods.
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