Back in 1991, the Northwest correspondent for the New York Times, Tim Egan, wrote a fine book of essays on the Pacific Northwest, titled "The Good Rain." I highly recommend it.

Over the years, I've come to understand exactly what the title means, at least to me. While it's easy for newcomers, visitors and nattering weatherpersons here to blab on and on, seemingly discouraged, about Western Washington's rain, it's actually a light rain, a nourishing rain, a cooling rain, a quintesentially good rain. Things grow, we chill out a bit - and face it, as my eight-year-old son is very quick to point out, too much sun and heat is not a good thing.

And so I find myself missing the rain, when it's dry for more than a few days in a row here. This galumphing ex-Chicagoan has gone native, I guess.

Apparently, I've gotten caried away. Because I now also thoroughly appreciate what might be called the Good Wait, for the Washington State Ferries. This happens not so much on your first ferry trip of the day, i.e. Fauntleroy to Vashon Island, and then Southworth (assuming you live in West Seattle like we do, and want to enjoy a weekend day-trip on the West Sound); but on the way back, when your arrival time at the dock is often not nearly as well calibrated as at the day's start.

I still remember a day trip by ferry a number of years ago from West Seattle with a visiting in-law from out of town, plus another in-law who lived in South Puget Sound, and that in-law's spouse, to nearby Vashon, the home of the famous bicycle tree once featured in Ripley's Believe It Or Not. When we arrived back at the ferry dock on north Vashon after our outing, the second in-law's spouse had a car-door slamming fit because - get this! - we'd just missed a departing ferry, and had to wait another 30 minutes. It's highly advisable not to ever get on a Washington State Ferry if you, or your schedule, are wound that tight.

You bring a book (always a book), or maybe a magazine, an acoustic guitar, and a cooler full of beverages and snacks in the trunk. And you just chill. Maybe even get out of your car and walk along the dock, enjoying the great water and mountain views. You choose to be IN the moment, not a Jones-ing, cell-phone-toting, I-Pod-disabled nebbish.

This, after all, is why you live in the Pacific Northwest. Unless you were simply transferred here, and are still living in your own porta-cul-de-sac.

So, yeah, I call the wait for the ferry The Good Wait.

I had one of those just yesterday, at the Southworth ferry dock in Kitsap County, on the way back from a great Father's Day outing with my family at Joemma Beach State Park, on Key Peninsula.

There's always the question of whether to drive back around over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge via Route 16, into I-5 and then north to Seattle through a great deal of weekend traffic, or drive to the ferry at Southworth via Route 16 north and then traverse the rolling hills and light weekend traffic on Sedgewick Road east, only to wait 30 to 40 minutes for the next boat. Regardless of the wait, I'm all for Door Number Two, and it was oh so relaxing yesterday. I learned later there was a huge, dead-stop, long traffic jam on I-16 heading back south across the Narrows Bridge, toward I-5. Schadenfreude. I know. I'm a bad person.

Anyway, I highly recommend wasting time at a ferry dock soon, in Western Washington.

The Good Wait awaits you.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at June 20, 2005 11:14 PM

---

---

---