We used to have a little motel in Seaview, Washington.  The end of the Kite Festival marked the last burst of summer; one week until Labor Day, one week after that until Rod Run, then a drop off in visitors with 2-3 weeks of the quiet, largely retired, travelers and the return to our quiet beach existence.

I looked to this time of year with a mixture of sadness and relief.  Hoteliers are some of the hardest working folk around.  Here in an economy of feast or famine seasons, the reduction in work load was always welcomed after 4 months of steady comings and goings, piles of laundry, long hours and maintenance surprises.  At the same time, the end of season meant missing the families returning, watching kids and dogs get a year older and catching up on the lives of what we came to call our extended family.  In the quiet season, I missed the stories of weddings, anniversaries and other momentous family occasions spent blissfully at our beach.  I missed the family reunions and group gatherings, watching the joys of other families with the perspective of it not being one’s own.

Families return each year to our beach, swelling its population from a year-round 10,000-ish to as many as 75,000 on a summer Saturday.  I like both sides of that coin;  it’s akin to the changing of seasons from winter snow to spring budding to warm summer to rainy fall (something we don’t really experience here).  We get to bask in the contrast of being a bustling string of little towns for a few months a year and having 28 miles of beach all to ourselves the rest of the time.  The ebb and flow is sometimes more jolting than we’d like, but it’s precious, nonetheless.

I look forward to those fall and winter days when the sun pops its shining face out and gives those of us lucky enough to live here year-round a private day of summer exploration.  We’ve been grumbling a lot this summer about the lack of, well, “summer”.  The days we’ve had sun have been few and far between, uncharacteristic for our little slice of coast.  It’s frustrating, in an economy driven by tourism, to have the weather keeping our summer friends from coming to the beach.

But last night, when I walked outside just after midnight and was met with the most velvety mist of fog, better than any facial I’ve ever paid for, with the perfect accompaniment of 63-degrees… I just wanted to go for a walk.  So we did.  Those moments are usually found in the spring and fall, and reserved for those of us who are serendipitously in the right place at the right time, the odds increased by our full-time exposure.

So, I guess my thoughts for today can be summed up by saying it isn’t so much a cold summer as an opportunity to share some of the magic of this place with those who normally don’t get to see this face of our Peninsula.  May our part-time residents realize its charms.