Hide and Seek with Mt. Rainier
I’m quite certain part of the point of Wordle is to solve it as quickly as possible. Normally, I don’t play that way. I like to come up with as many words as possible with the green letters I have. Except one day, I was mid-game while waiting for a flight to take off and it was getting to be crunch time and I was struggling to come up with what the word was. I had a G and U in gold, no green letters, absolutely no idea what direction to go, and the flight attendants were starting the safety briefing. Obviously I needed to crowd source so I turned to the young man beside me and asked, “do you play Wordle?” He smiled and said,
“I love Wordle, let me see what you have.” As I handed him my phone, he went on to say with a warm smile, “I grew up in Nairobi and all I did all summer long was play soccer until I was exhausted and take a break to play scrabble, so you asked the right person for help.” I suggested GUANT, turning the G and U to green while asking him if Seattle was his home now or if he was just visiting. He said, “I moved to Washington D. C. for college and because I studied computer science, I came to Seattle each summer to do internships at different tech companies each year. I fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and moved here to work for Microsoft in October, 2019,” and his face told me he felt betrayed by the Pacific Northwest.
“Aw, that’s tough. If you had only ever been here in the summer, you probably thought it was always blue skies and mountains every day, huh?”
“Exactly,” he lamented as we finished my Wordle with GUARD in all green just as the flight attendants shut the door and it was time to put my phone in airplane mode.
He continued, “not only did the beautiful mountains hide for months and months and it rain and rain and rain, but then the pandemic kept me from my scrabble group.”
“Where did you find a scrabble group?” I asked.
“Just Meet Ups. I looked for a scrabble group on Meet Ups and showed up to a group of sweet 70 year old women who handed me my ass with a smile on their face, offered me a cookie and then handed me it again. It was very humbling. As if I needed another reason to be depressed.”
The Blue Angels with a Mt. Rainier backdrop - a Seafair specialty.
I went on to ask him all kinds of questions about Nairobi, moving to D.C., and moving to Seattle. He kept coming back to the mountains here and how much he loves seeing them and how much he misses them during the winter months, especially Mt. Rainier. I have had this same conversation with so many people who move to Seattle from places without mountains or with mountains that they miss. The thing about the mountains in Seattle, if you’ve never been on a clear day, is that they surround us: the Olympic range is to the west, the Cascade mountains are to the east, Mt. Rainier is a pillar of stunning beauty standing on her own in the south, and Mt. Baker reflects her in the north. And Seattle is hilly, so on a clear day from the top of most any crest, they steal your breath in every direction like a cold plunge.
One day a friend of mine was worrying for me that my oldest daughter, who likes to move to continents far, far away from me, might never come back. It happened to be a pristine summer day and we were on a boat in the middle of Lake Washington with my daughter getting ready to surf in full view of Mt. Rainier, and I said with a wry but confident smile, “I know she’ll always come back home because she loves this lake and that mountain.” She winked and agreed.
Almost six years ago, we moved to a house where, from the very tip of the corner of the back yard, on a clear day, you can see Mt. Rainier. Conversely, on a cloudy day, I can stand there and see where Mt. Rainier is, even when I can’t see her. Even though I can see the clouds from my kitchen window, I still go outside and to the corner of the yard to look because maybe, just maybe, I might still get a glimpse of her. Moving to this house also created a new route to work that includes driving across the longest floating bridge in the U.S. that spans Lake Washington to get from Seattle to the east side. From the middle of this bridge, for just a minute at 60 miles an hour, there is a clear view of Mt.Rainier, on the days she’s out. Other days, there is a clear view of where she stands behind the clouds. Sometimes only her top is poking out. There are rare days when a thin ring wraps her middle. On my way home each night, I have to look back over my left shoulder to glimpse her, which could be dangerous, but the traffic that time of day is quite slow, so it’s usually ok, and I can see how she looks in the evening light – on lucky days. The sun sets over behind the Olympics, casting a soft pink glow on her ever white top, a trait we share. As you are beginning to see, I spend a lot of time looking for and at this beautiful mountain. Imagine how taken I was with the picture my daughter, Carly, sent me of her view from near the top of Mt. Rainier – above the clouds at sunrise - on her climb last summer.
Mt. Rainier at sunrise - close to the summit.
One day, as I rode my bike across the bridge to work, much slower than 60 miles per hour, the sun was just rising up to the east of her, casting a soft orange glow on her south east side, I thanked God for her beauty and a thought came to my mind that I could never have come to on my own. “This mountain’s presence is much like my love and plans for you. Sometimes it is clear and hangs prominently in front of you, reflecting the light from every direction. Other times, it is shrouded, sometimes for weeks at a time. But it is still there just the same, even when you cannot see it.” It is this that compels me to look each day for Mt. Rainier, whether it be a pristine blue skied day, or an ominous dark clouded storm for the 23rd day in a row. It doesn’t change the reality of what is there. This is what I shared with my Wordle friend on the plane who was accustomed to the blue skies of Nairobi and his ever-present view of Mt. Kenya.
The view of where Mt. Rainier is behind the clouds.
