The Mt. Rainier appreciation post I’ve been promising all my Instagram followers for a few months now

Picture this. Its 7.45am, and the first rays of the Winter sun are beating against your window shades. You leave your apartment and exit your building, trampling the brown and soaked leaves on the glistening sidewalk. You make your way to a college campus that is just waking up, as the first sets of students are shuffling their way to their 8am classes. You turn a corner, and into an opening, into this view.

As the rainy Seattle winter sets in, I realize I don’t have very many of these mornings left for a long time. I am therefore beginning to appreciate even more than I do every morning. This is also the first time I am encountering an experience which has been very routine over the past few months, which still takes my breath away every single time.

But it is only recently, on cloudy/rainy days when the mountain is shrouded in its own gray blanket, I turn the corner and feel disappointed. That disappointment stays with me as I walk into my building and my lab, as I begin my work for the day. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, that disappointment remains until the mountain shines out to wipe it away. Conversely, on days when the mountain majestically stands over the landscape, a smile hides under my mask and I feel that little bit happier through the day.

I’m sure there’s research somewhere on the effects of Nature or similar things on people’s moods and productivity levels and so much more, but even if there is not, this feeling is my own and nothing can take away from it.

A lot of people ask me why I come in to lab so early in the morning, when my first commitments aren’t until 9.30 (on average). Now you know. I simply don’t want to risk missing the morning sun on the mountain and even though it’s still glorious later in the day, it simply does not compare.