Someone told me the other day that there are two seasons in coastal Oregon: rain and sunshine. If that's true, we just entered the 'other' season. It started raining today and it's supposed to rain until maybe Wednesday. (That's five days of constant rain.) The rainy season is something I wanted to experience.
Does it take a certain type of mental make up to enjoy persistent rain? Is persistent rain comparable to Northeastern snow that never goes away for months at a time? What does the human psyche think about 'rainy' vs 'sunny'. I did a little research by going to a Portland specific website for a discussion of how to handle the persistent rain and gloom of the Pacific Northwest. Apparently, there are people who feel BETTER in clouds and rain than in sunshine. The consensus is these folks are in the minority. Most of us prefer sunshine. The majority of people in the discussion actually felt you need to take extra Vitamin D in the winter to compensate for the lack of sunshine. Others felt it wasn't the rain so much as the constant gloom that affected people.
As to the psyche handling the persistent rain and overcast skies, some said that escaping for a mid-winter sunny climate vacation is all it takes to handle the rainy season. Others said if you've moved here from 'somewhere else', it's important to shed those ingrained attitudes of staying inside when it rains. Their ideas involved buying good rain gear, ignoring the rain, and going out, out, outside. A pretty vocal group touted regular physical exercise as the way to combat the rain blues.
But just as a small minority of people feel better when it rains, there's also a small minority of people who get SAD (seasonally affected depression), and a sunny vacation or all the exercise in the world isn't going to cut it. These folks use 'light boxes' to simulate sunshine and use full light spectrum light bulbs in their houses. The final suggestion was hilarious: If you can't cut the rainy season, just MOVE out of the region. My personal favorite, and the suggestion that made the most sense to me, was to embrace the rain and enjoy the smells, textures, and sensations that the rain triggers. I have a feeling those are the minority that really enjoy rain more than sun.
I lived in a rainy climate for eight years, but it was different. It was a mix of sun and rain almost every day during a significant portion of the year. New Orleans has about six months of what I term 'tropical weather'. It's hot, humid, and sunny in the morning and early afternoon. Then it rains almost every late afternoon. The result is it's steamy for the evening and the night. My observation was New Orleans natives get edgy and cranky if it doesn't rain.
Just as the Eskimo language has a gillion words for snow, 'rain' up here is graded and nuanced. mist, misty, foggy, dewy, light, medium, heavy showers, intermittent showers, constant showers, drizzle, sprinkling, spitting, torrents, and 'sheets'. However, no one talks of 'cloudbursts', 'frog stranglers', 'toad stranglers', or 'gulley washers'. Pacific Northwest rain is NOT intermittent. I've been listening, but no one has suggested a euphemism for the Pacific ocean storms that batter the coastline in the winter. I'm very eager to see one of these from the comfort of my living room, of course.
Assuming you follow all the suggestions to combat SAD (isn't that a great acronym ), the rain can still restrict your movements. For example, we are skipping the Lincoln City Kite Festival today because we can't seem to make ourselves stand around in the rain and look up at kites in the sky. Thus, we come to the other method of learning to live up here: find an indoor hobby. There's lots of needlework and woodworking up here. This is the first place I've lived where the library is open 7 DAYS A WEEK from early until late every single day. The recreation center is open 7 days a week; and at least 12 hours a day for 6 days of the week. This house has 15 puzzles stashed away in various cupboards as well as a library of movies. I came prepared: I have my sewing machine, and my crazy quilt stuff. I'm hoping to get a big jump on making it. Of course, my quilt making will be squeezed between the exercise regimen, the rainy beach walks, and the indoor activities we've been saving for the rainy season.
I'm hoping to store up the clouds and rain, so I can cope with the relentless sunshine and lack of clouds in Arizona, which I admit, gets on my last nerve. I think I'm one of those people who prefer the rain to the sun, but I'm getting ready to test that theory.
