...you'll get it before it comes out in the Quilcene Community Center's June Newsletter. If you read it here and don't get the Newsletter, well; you'll have read something about summer and Quilcene.

                        Realigning Summer to Fit Quilcene

With all deference to and respect for the official borders for Summer, solstice to equinox (some moment on or around June 21 to another precise moment around or on September 21), it’s now (just) past Memorial Day and, here in Quilcene, we should just say, between now and Labor Day, it’s SUMMER!

Yea! Buy new sunglasses, break out the kayaks, check the tide charts to see when the water at Linger Longer might be warm enough to swim in, finish up that planting, do the real (assuming the first mowing is just the rough work) lawngrooming, get outside and…

Wait, you say; sure, we’ve been getting some warm weather; the sun comes up way early and stays out until after a reasonable bedtime; and, besides, there is a thing called “June Gloom,” and for a reason (drizzle, clouds, rain); no, you say, we’re not out of the woods yet.

No; we’re in the woods; in the foothills of grand mountains, along the streams and the canal. We’re here; and here is a good place to be.

Toward the end of our first winter here, 1979, a particularly cold one (which we thought, with snow on the ground for most of it, the Hood Canal Bridge underwater since February; might be just normal for these parts), our neighbor out in the Dabob Valley, Nancy Wyatt, assured us with, “Just wait until summer. You won’t want to be anywhere else.”

She was, of course, correct.  Just check the national weather coverage. While hurricane season and tornado season and just-plain-hot season deep fry and/or dry roast (dry heat, wet heat; it’s all heat) most of the country, we rarely swelter here. It might be drizzly, but we’re often the coolest place in the continental United States (not really including high mountains in this assessment).

Okay, I have sweltered. We do own a window-sized air conditioner; ready, but not yet installed. And, since the realigned Quilcene Summer does align with peak exterior painting season, I must admit that, every year I make a pledge that I won’t complain about any heat if it will just stop raining; and then, a little humidity, a hot day or two, and, yes, I will complain.

A friend of mine, Stephen Davis, is over on the Big Island, surfing, working on a tour boat, creating and selling paintings, swimming with dolphins, dodging lava flows, trying not to breathe in toxic air. It’s probably a little less wonderful with the volcano activity, but, it was, it seemed, for him, a sort of perfect setup. Yet, he’s talking about coming back here. “And leave Paradise?” “Well,” he said, “if this is Paradise, you live in Shangri-la.”

Well, yeah; he’s right. Sometimes, and it can be any time of year, really; Quilcene is that sort of place.  I have to go… outside. It’s work. I’m not complaining. Really. See you.