Lost shoe looking for its mate

The village of Birch Bay has a lovely walking path that extends for more than a mile along the bay. the path is just up from the beach, so there is a good view of the water as we walk, but the path is an easier walk than along the gravel and sand beach. We often walk the full length of the path. We enjoy counting the great blue herons, watching the gulls and keeping our eye on the eagles’ nest at the north end of the walk. For about a week now, there has been a single child’s shoe on a rock near the south end of the path. Someone has placed it on the large walk and weighted it with a smaller rock so that it can be easily seen from the street as one drives by and it won’t blow off of the rock when the winds pick up. It is covered in glitter, so it shines when the sun is on it. As a grandfather, I can easily imagine a child losing a shoe as they played along the path. Perhaps the shoe was dropped from a carriage or kicked out of a door when a child was loaded into a car. I don’t know the story of the shoe, but I keep hoping that the owner will rediscover it and it can be reunited with its mate. Each day that passes makes it more likely that the mate will be discarded. After all a single shoe just isn’t enough for most people. Seeing it makes me just a little sad, but there remains a spark of hope. Today it is the weekend. Perhaps the shoe was lost on the weekend and the family will return and discover the lost.

Some of my friends who do not live in Washington ask me about how I am adjusting to all of the rain. It does rain more here than any other place where we have lived, but days when it rains all day long are relatively rare. More common is a day when there are rain showers and also times when it isn’t raining. I think that I may have redefined the term “partly cloudy” in my mind. If I can see any blue sky at all, even if the majority of the sky is filled with clouds, I’m likely to call the day partly cloudy. I think that in the other places I have lived, I might have called a day cloudy when at least half of the sky was filled with clouds. We have learned that the forecasts are not always accurate. it was supposed to be rainy all day long yesterday, but it didn’t start raining until after dinner in the evening. Most of the day was dry and lovely.

Still, there is something about the weather here that is consistent with other places we have lived. According to the natives, the weather we are having is not “normal.” “It isn’t usually like this,” we’ve been told. We were told the same thing about South Dakota, Idaho, North Dakota and Chicago.

I remember the Chicago blizzard of ’78. It was one of the largest snowstorms in Chicago history at the time with 21 inches of snowfall in a two-day period. The wind blew, so there were lots of drifts. Only 2 inches of snow was forecast, so we didn’t change our plans. My sister was in the city, interviewing for a job. I had tire chains and was able to get around, but there were a lot of cars that had just been abandoned on the streets and freeways. The locals told us that such a storm was something they had never before seen. “Our winters aren’t usually like this.”

We heard it about record summer heat and extended winter cold in North Dakota. In fact, the weather was a major topic in many of our conversations in North Dakota where our congregations were filled with farmers who always had an eye for the sky and the clouds on the horizon.

Our realtor in Idaho informed us that the heat of the summer we moved was unusual, and a cloudy autumn was “strange” for Boise, where, according to the realtor, “it is sunny 360 days a year.” Of course had we been astute, we would have recognized that such a claim is one made by cities in the desert, and the climate of Boise was close to a desert.

We lived in South Dakota for 25 years, but according to long-term residents, none of those years was “typical.” The spring was too short, or the summer was too late. The cold lasted too long or the snows came too soon. No matter what the weather, we could almost always find someone who would say, “When I was going up here, the weather wasn’t like this.”

So it shouldn’t surprise us that we are having a rainy June here in northwest Washington. Barely more than a week into June, and the town of Ferndale has already surpassed its average rainfall for the entire month. Rainfall to date as of yesterday was 1.72 inches. Normal average for the month of June is 1.45 inches. June 9th was the most rainy June 9th ever recorded. The locals tell us “Sure it rains her in the winter, but in a normal year we have beautiful weather from April through October. People are used to going outside to ride bikes, paddle, and go for walks whenever they want. This is a mecca of outdoor activity.”

They might be right. But it is also a good place to own a quality rain coat.

Fortunately, it is also a good place to have waterproof shoes. The sparkly shoe on the rock at the end of the walking path is one of those waterproof shoes. If it hasn’t been discovered by its owner, it is getting wet right now, because it is raining once again. But it won’t be ruined. I sure hope it gets found by its owner soon. Maybe the rain will stop and the sun will come out and the sparkle of the glitter on the shoe will catch their attention today.

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