Northwest Quotes

“I reached down to feel the soil, and I touched the outreaching roots of the trees that bore horizontally and vertically hundreds of feet through the forest. I stroked the earth with my palm, and I could almost feel that invisible network of capillary roots that sucks moisture and nutrients out of every inch of the soil I was standing on. I breathed in and out. I was part of the forest. I was alive.”
― Ned Hayes, The Eagle Tree

“Hating the Rain

She hates the ever-falling winter rain,
the gray and endless humidity
that bites to the bone and stings
even after the hot bath and stiff
struggle into bed and under the quilts,

but the winter ferns, and the way they
wave in a slight breeze as though happy
like grandmother’s lace curtains
can’t be abandoned or lived without.

She hates the endless dripping
like a clock ticking away life
and the heavy fog that swallows light
as though life itself were vanishing,

but the tree frogs with their songs
and their clinging to matching green
like family holding together
stitch her thoughts back to July picnics.

She hates her complaining voice
that discourages her children’s calls
and encourages their urgings that she
move, maybe to Florida citrus sun,

but gray day softness steeps her
patience and quiets her fear of loss
into something like gratitude
clinging like green to summer moss

and this she knows: she loves the rain.”
― Marian Blue, How Many Words for Rain

“It was a mild winter’s evening in ‘Japp’s Saloon and Speakeasy’, in the northwest corner of the only legal red-light area of the city. (The S.O.D.s believed in crime management.) Timaset Skooch leaned back in the aluminum framed chair, checking his cards carefully while wearing his best poker face. Across the table from him sat Jonn Deire, a large man who was trying very hard to out-poker face him and who didn’t enjoy jokes about his name much.”
― Christina Engela, Loderunner

“Blackpool is the Las Vegas of northwest England.”
― Steven Magee