In the maritime world, a “weather window” refers to a period of time when weather conditions are suitable and safe for a particular maritime activity, such as sailing, shipping, or fishing. I hadn’t heard this term before until I went on a mural tour with Gretchen Leggit at the Noisy Waters Mural Festival. In her own definition, she titled this mural “Weather Window” and explained that, in the PNW, sometimes the weather surprises us. The forecast could predict gray and rainy for ten straight days (as it’s doing now). But, if we pay attention, we’ll see that there are many pockets, many weather windows, when the clouds clear for a bit. And the sun shines through. Which is exactly what happened as she was describing it!
I’ve discovered that the only way to enjoy these weather windows is if I get outside no matter the weather. If I wait inside, I’ll be head over my desk when the weather window appears and likely miss the whole thing. We have to put ourselves in the path of blessing because the conditions will never be just right. Going outside might be the only thing that makes them so.
This is a major strategy of mine for surviving the “Dark Four” months of the PNW. In fact, it’s becoming more difficult for me to call November-February the Dark Four because they are so full of weather windows. I swim almost every Sunday morning in Bellingham Bay. In the 18 months our crew has been doing that, I can recall it actually raining just a couple times. Now, it’s gray! It’s blustery! The whole rest of the day might dump! But there is something about showing up on those shores that clears things up. For 20 minutes, we bask in the weather window though the drive there was a deluge.
Oliver Burkeman, in his amazing book 4000 Weeks, says the whole idea that we can “clear the decks” in our lives is a myth. We can spend our whole lives waiting to have a looser schedule, a more important job, a better set-up for doing art. We don’t read the book on antiracism because we’re going to take that online course. We don’t give money away because we can’t give a lot. We squander our energy in the binary, in the either/or. We can spend our whole lives waiting for the clouds to clear. And never feel the exhilaration of being outside when the rainbow shows up.
Emily shared Thich Nhat Han’s quote with me this week, “The calm is already in the water.” Isn’t that gorgeous? We don’t have to go looking for it. We don’t have to get rid of every other duty and distraction in our lives to feel it. But we do have to go down to the water’s edge. May your week be full of weather windows.