Another Roadside Attraction

by Tom Robbins

Off the Pacific shore of Washington State the Japanese Current—a mammoth river of tropical water—zooms close by the coast on a southernly turn. Its warmth is released in the form of billows of tepid vapor, which the prevailing winds drive inland. When, a few miles in, the warm vapor bangs head-on into the Olympic Mountain Range, it is abruptly pushed upward and outward, cooling as it rises and condensing into rain. In the emerald area that lies between the Olympics (the coastal range) and the Cascade Range some ninety miles to the east, temperatures are mild and even. But during the autumn and winter months it is not unusual for precipitation to fall on five of every seven days. And when it is not raining, still the gray is pervasive; the sun a little boiled potato in a stew of dirty dumplings; the fire and light and energy of the cosmos trapped somewhere far behind that impenetrable slugbelly sky.