Late light

The sky stays light very late at this latitude. 9:45 and there was still light in the sky here in Seattle, even now, two weeks off the solstice. (Has it been two weeks since the solstice? Is it possible there's only a week left until I'll have been away from home for an entire month?) The length of the daylight is disorienting and strange, and it will only be stranger tomorrow, when I make my drive to Vancouver. I'll arrive in time for a late lunch, I think, and spend the day downtown. Unstructured time, guided a little by my reading at the invaluable wikitravel.org. Since I'm going all the way to Canada I might as well spend some extra time, so July 8 will be entirely in the city, and I have a reservation to see Richard II at Vanier Park that evening. In the process I'll need to figure out how public transit works in Vancouver, since parking downtown is likely to be an expensive hassle and my GPS doesn't have Canadian maps anyway. And I'll be alone for the night for the first time since hitting San Francisco.

I'm nervous about tomorrow. More nervous, actually, than I was on June 12, the eve of this whole great adventure. I think the difference is that on June 12 I knew that, if things went terribly, I could be home again on June 14. But the port I'm setting out from tomorrow is already across the continent from my comfort zone. This, of course, is why I'm going to Vancouver. Seattle is the farthest I knew I would get from Fort Myers if all went well, but if I go that far and no farther, I'll feel like I'm straggling home. Vancouver is a victory lap: a way to say to myself, convincingly, "and there's more where that came from." And there is. But I'm nervous anyway.

My time in Seattle has been important. It's a city they've got here -- decisively bigger than Portland, I found to my surprise; more to see, more right and more wrong turns to make. There was a shooting in front of the community center three blocks from Alexis's flat yesterday while we were fooling around in the farmers' market. On the other hand, there's a lot to love here, too, and I'm not talking about the kitschy (but kind of cute) Space Needle; I'm talking about the blackbird art in the UW library, the used bookstores that give 20% off if you know what book a quote comes from, the fact that this is simultaneously the town of Boeing and Starbucks, Bill Gates and Dan Savage. I like that Seattle's City Center, where we are, supports not one but several Ethiopian restaurants, a kind of cooking I didn't know existed until a few days ago. I don't think I would want to live here. But if I did live here, there would be a lot to love. Seattle is a city that has got a personality, distinct and complicated; it doesn't feel schizophrenic like San Francisco, monomaniacal like Winnemucca, or empty like Hays. I don't think we're compatible, Seattle and I. It is too much like Alexis's cat, adorable and fickle. But I understand this place now in a way that goes beyond "it's a town in Washington."

I'll probably be back in Seattle on Thursday. But from now to then, it's north...