The Pacific Northwest

by compound complex 92 Replies latest jw experiences

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  compound complex

  THE PACIFIC COAST was my surrogate guardian. It held both my heart and my spirit within its mighty bosom.

  My impoverished family loved and cherished the sea, stretching outward beyond infinity; but it was I, more than the others, who took to the e'er dreary landscape. In a most peculiar manner, the dank surroundings soothed me and enveloped me in crawling mists that were more welcomed to me than the evaporating rays of a cavorting summer sun.

  I, however, am no longer that pensive lad who found comfort in the dark and cold and deep blue sea. Today, a man in the physical sense, I no longer possess that childlike fascination with my former abode. I reside in The City. Luxuries absent during youth abound, satisfying beyond mere need. The sterile vista I gaze upon is that of steel and stone and glass; its combination in regal, imposing edifices commands my admiring view yet scarcely my heart.

  Yesterday's child has vanished from all remembrance . . .
  
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  compound complex

  I watch the black oaks of my woods sway gently against an early morning expanse that is an uncharacteristic gray, but a gray illumined by a softer and gentler summer's sun.

  
  

  What yesterday had been the regal, glossy green leaves of the stately sentinels are today, rather, a buffed sage foliage that I do not recall ever having viewed before. Somehow, the look, the feel, the mood that overtake me at this moment transport me back to the foggy coast of my youth. At that particular time of my life, I was not so taken with the unrelenting cool of a Pacific summer.

  
  

  Now, in this land of perpetual sun whose increasing rise in temperature is, in a frightening way, relentless, this sudden and uncommon wafting of damp and fresh upon my body is healing . . .

  
  
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  compound complex

  Where I live now, we have redwoods, but not the coastal fog. The summers are hot.

  
  

  THE SEVEN REDWOODS

  Seated in a lounge of cushioned steel, I lean

  back and follow my wandering eyes up seven

  towering trunks till their limbs and needles mass
  

  as one, hiding rigid shafts that pierce the sky.

  Removed from native soil and coastal fogs, I
  

  marvel that dry and hot have harmed us not.

  I, too, was born in mist but truly grew though
  

  warmth was scarce and a steely cool prevailed.

  Thrive I do amidst a scorching heat, the parching
  

  wind; like our trees, somehow, we shall survive.