For 9 months out of the year, rain is a nearly daily fact of life here around Seattle. You can either spend all that time trying to avoid it, or you can embrace it. As an avid walker, I try to do the latter.
Today, I slung my Fujifilm X-T1 around my neck and turned my walk into a photo safari. Both the body and kit lens are weatherproof, so I didn't have to worry about protecting it from the elements.
I can't pretend that I'm a skilled photographer, but it's a fun activity and Steemit has given me the inspiration to practice more! And I love how viewing the world through a frame made me more aware of the green grass pushing through the mud and the red glow of hawthorn berries on a branch.
I headed on a 5-mile route to and around my favorite park, Marymoor. It's just down the bike path along the river from where I live, in Redmond, Washington.
In the summer, the park is an overactive hive of hobbies on display. Joggers and bikers clog the trails. Model planes fill the air over the RC field. Parents cheer on their kids' sports games, and LARPers battle alongside paragliders practicing their kiting. In the evenings, thousands of people gather for outdoor movies and concerts and beer fests.
But Marymoor Park has a far different feel in the rain.
The sports fields look weathered and waterlogged.
No bikes race around the velodrome.
The climbing wall stands unclimbed against the flat gray sky.
And there's no way that I'm going to take off my shoes and walk along the reflexology path of stones.
Instead, I'm filled with a melancholic nostalgia. It was here, on a rainy day like this one, that I fell for my first love. Our skydiving lessons had been canceled due to the weather, so we met up in Marymoor halfway between our homes. We played frisbee and climbed trees and rode a T-Rex-on-a-spring all in the driving rain. We were shivering and soaked to the skin but still laughing. There are half a dozen places where we almost shared our first kiss, but it didn't come until later that night when we were dry and indoors.
My current love was back home writing music, so I had to come up with another way to distract myself from my thoughts. The 40-acre off-leash dog park is always a safe bet - dogs still have to exercise even if it's raining! Sure enough, this was the only place in the park where I met other people (and dozens of their four-legged companions).
"Another soggy day," a man in a hunting jacket with a brown mixed-breed dog said to me. "Yup," I responded. And that was the extent of my conversations on this outing.
Before I left, I made a stop at my favorite tree. It's unimaginably ugly, which is what makes it so beautiful. I don't know why its branches grow in such a wonky, tangled pile. If you zoom in on the photo I took (pardon the fuzziness from the rain), it looks like the eye of a storm or the center of a galaxy, fringed in moss.
Thanks for coming on this walk with me! It was certainly a challenge trying to take pictures with bad lighting in the rain. I'm submitting this to MyPictureDay hosted by @TimSaid. If you want to see some legit photography instead of this mess, check out his posts and those of some of the other participants under the tag #mypictureday. (I'm still upvoting/commenting on some of my favorites if you want recommendations!)
- Katie,
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