I wrote this quite a spell ago and published it in a local paper.

Not Just Anyone Can Live In This Place
by Kamalla Rose Kaur
 
"Not just anyone can live in this place." I was told repeatedly down through the years by my grandparents, parents and many regional teachers. I was raised understanding that the Pacific Northwest in general and Bellingham in particular are not suitable dwelling places for those of us who can't handle being deeply alone with our own thoughts and feelings. From the vantage point of New York City, Washington State is a wilderness and only Seattle is a big enough dot to show up on a New Yorker's mental map of the universe. This is good. I was taught young to take pride in Bellingham's vast isolation from the power centers of the USA. Traditionally Bellingham is the home of hermits and sourdoughs, lumbermen and fishermen, artists and intellectuals and other various escapees from USA "civilization". In my teens, we became a haven for hippies and social justice activists as well.
 
Unfortunately Bellingham is quickly getting more and more on the map, and as it does it is becoming more and more like everywhere else in the USA. Nowadays, when it is sunny in the North end of Bellingham, I can forget completely that I am not in California.  It looks and feels just like California; same condos, same businesses, same street, called "Cordato".
 
Still I hold faith in this place. This isn't California, nor is the Pacific Northwest going to be as easily conquered by developers and profiteers. Nature is still big and powerful here and not just anyone, or anything, can live in this place. California style buildings, businesses, promotions, lifestyles and denial decay quickly here during our dark months. Constant wetness, molds and fungii, attack our buildings, our bodies and our  moods. You can try to distract yourself from the reality that the cloud ceiling is pressing down and the walls of constant drizzle are sqeezing your soul in; you can go out on the town somewhere and drink, you can party with friends and drink, or you can hang at home with friends and family, and drink - or why not just stay home by yourself and drink? Down through my life I have witnessed that Pacific Northwest dark months brew many drunks.    
 
Of course there are the movies, and museums, restaurants and coffee shops, and shopping; but during our nine or ten months of darkness you will likely begin to feel lonely even when surrounded by family and friends. Your world, like the weather may well close in on you until you have no one, and nothing, to really be with, except yourself - and you may have to face the fact that you are lousy company. The Pacific Northwest is depressing. Many people commit suicide here.
 
So maybe you buy a sunlamp, or if you have the money maybe you escape to California or Hawaii for a couple months each winter so you don't have to really experience being a Pacific Northwesterner. And when you return, so does your fungal infection and your mold and fungus allergies and soon you awaken to the fact that your oversized beige or grey modern house looks depressingly like everyone elses, and it was made on the cheap and it is rotting exceedingly fast. Best to cut your losses and go back where you belong.
 
Not just anyone can live in this place of long mysterious misty night.
 
Then suddenly the skies clear, the mountains and islands appear, and we are hit by the Shagra-La-La effect. We boat, swim, ski, hike!
 
Then the night returns and grey rains pour and the winds howl.
 
True Pacific Northwesterners often complain about the sun. We mutter about "global warming" and fear that Bellingham's climate is "improving". Pacific Northwesterns go to Larrabee State Park on rainy days. We prefer pebbly beaches and we never tire of standing alone on cliffs in the biting cold wet briny breeze, staring West out over the slate winter grey waters of Puget Sound. We hike and bike in the rain. We value solitude and we are stubbornly independent - we are friendly but we also tend to be loners. That is what I was taught, about my regional culture, about my people. Real old time Pacific Northwesterners have taught me, but more powerfully,  the darkness has taught me, the years of rain have taught me, the mud and the slugs have taught me, and my happiness within my own solitude has taught me,  the cosmic power of decay and rebirth in this land.
 
Not just anyone can live in this place. Here in the Pacific Northwest, nature is very big and we are, by nature, either humble or in the process of being humbled.