THESE TIMES

West Washingtonians in winter

Kirk Ericson | Jan 18, 20240

We in Western Washington are in our hardest stretch of weather. It’s mostly freezing rain, showers, rain, more rain, drizzles, mizzles and downpours, and we’ve got another few months of it staring at us. Our cold and rain loom like an extended sentence in the hole.

In 1989, I lived just outside of Washington, D.C., where I worked for Gannett News Service and was around people from around the nation. I’d often ask those people what they thought when they thought of our state, and a common answer involved the words “rain” and “depressed.”

The area west of the Cascade crest does have the rainiest spots in the continental United States. Of the places in the Lower 48 with the highest annual rainfall, several are on the Olympic Peninsula, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Among those locations is Humptulips, everyone’s favorite place name in Washington.

Rain makes our crops grow and our rivers flow, but some outsiders believe it makes us sullen.

This association of rain with depression, and depression with suicide, leads many people to believe our state (ignoring the two-thirds of our state that’s arid and sunny) has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation.

It’s not true.

We’re not even close. Here are two top 10 lists:

The state with the highest suicide rate in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was Wyoming with 32.3 suicides per 100,000 total population. Wyoming is followed by Montana, Alaska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nevada, North Dakota and West Virginia.

The state with the lowest rate is New Jersey with 7.1 suicides per 100,000 population. New Jersey is followed by New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, California, Rhode Island, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia.

We should note that four of the states with the highest suicide rates — Alaska, New Mexico, South Dakota and Oklahoma — have the highest percentage of Native Americans in the United States, according to the Census Bureau.

We should also note that of the 10 states with the highest suicide rates, seven went for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Of the 10 states with the lowest suicides rates, nine were won by Joe Biden.

And: The states with the highest rates of gun ownership have the highest rates of suicide.

I’m sure all that is complete coincidence.

Coming smack dab in the middle of the suicide rankings, at No. 25, is Washington.

Connecting depression and suicide with lots of rain doesn’t bear out. But as long as rain is associated with not being able to have fun (remember “Rain, rain go away, come again another day?”), our state will be saddled with this idea that we’re slimy skinned mopes on the verge of ending it all.

Rain, on its own, might make us morose, and extended periods of it when we’re confined inside might cause unhappiness, but mostly it makes us mopey, if it makes us anything.

What the rain does is force us inside — if we’re among the fortunate to have an inside. If we don’t have our physical and emotional interiors squared away, were asking for it. The risk of prolonged isolation from other humans is the real danger of our winters. It’s absolutely helpful during these cold, drab and rainy days to maintain happy and close relations with friends and family.

We know the sun will shine again, and when it does, we will appreciate it far more than residents of other states. It’s similar to a panorama witnessed after hours of hiking or climbing in our woods and mountains: That glorious view has been gained through pain.

That first week in March when the sun shines and the temperature climbs toward 60 is a time of communal happiness in this land. That first good sun of the year might make us feel like a butterfly sunning itself and stretching its wings on the remains of its chrysalis.

If it wasn’t for the rain, Western Washington would be jammed with far more people than it already is. Our rainy, chilly winters shield us from the severe population growth that has afflicted so many other Western states.

For now, keep dry. Keep warm. The sun will come.