Northwest Guilt

I’ve been plagued lately by Northwest Guilt.  It’s the feeling a person has that was raised in the Northwest, that says, on a sunny day, that person really needs to be outside enjoying the sunshine.  Since sunny days don’t come so often to us here in the Northwest, there’s a good reason for that feeling, but sometimes, circumstances prevent me from going outdoors on a sunny day - and the guilt takes over.

This time of year, even if it’s sunny outside, the trees all around us shade our house and yard, so we don’t get any direct sunlight after noon.  In the winter, we don’t get any direct light at all on our little piece of heaven.  At least in the fall we’ll get a few hours in the morning.  So, if I’m not outside early in the morning, when there’s still a little chill in the air, to feel that sunshine warming up my cheeks, I need to leave our property and go seek it out in some other location.  And some days, that’s just too much to ask - especially if I’m not even feeling like getting dressed.

So the past few weeks, we’ve enjoyed some incredibly beautiful sunny days, and I have to admit, I didn’t get outside for even one minute of them.  The guilt is still with me.  I think, as I’m crawling in to bed at night, “This day will never come again, and I blew it!  I never went outside to feel the sunshine!”  There’s just something about spending time outdoors that has been ingrained into the very core of my being that I can’t get away from.  And they say Catholics are the ones that live with all the guilt – ha!

But the upside is, this morning when I saw it was going to be another stellar fall day, I suggested to Kory that we take a little drive down to Seattle and walk around Green Lake, like we used to when we were dating.  He was up for it since Kaleb was gone all day on a sleepover with a friend. 

We enjoyed the fall colors and sunshine all around us on the drive south, but we really enjoyed the colors and sunshine all around us as we walked around Green Lake.  Many others were out enjoying the day as well, so it felt like a collective shedding-of-the-guilt as we strolled around that very familiar gem of a path in the Emerald City.

We had guests coming for dinner tonight so we couldn’t linger, but it was enough of an outing that it just might hold me over should another sunny day come this week when I miss it because I don’t feel like getting out of my pajamas.  Or, it might sink into my soul enough to inspire me to actually get out of the house and take one last look around my own neighborhood for that last splash of fall, and with camera in hand, prove to the world I am indeed a willing victim of the Northwest Guilt.