When I was 11 years old, my father moved my family up to Washington State. I had never even heard of Washington State. In the moving truck, with our family car hitched up to the back, I anticipated our arrival at our new home. Maybe I could see the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, or maybe if I was fortunate get a glimpse of the President Bush.
My father to this day explains his reasons for moving us: he didn't want to raise a family in the smog, the gangs, the racial wars at school. But now that I am older, I know it must have been very difficult to uproot and move away from everyone we had ever known.
We left the rolling desert hills and sunny southern California and trekked north. The desert turned to dry grass, then to rolling vineyard on the sides of warm hill tops and eventually into trees that were bigger than I had ever imagined. There was a gray mist about us and lichen and moss hanging from trees. I thought we had gone to Endore, the forested moon of Star Wars and we would meet the Ewoks. We were not in Washington D.C.. We now lived in Fern Gully.
My body has never truly grown accustomed to the dampness and chill of Western Washington. It is almost as if there is a melancholy spirit that hovers above this region. A kind of darkness you can feel pass as you clear the region by plane. This moldy spirit has also shaped who I am today and it creates a bond between everyone in the region as we all trudge along through long winters.
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