Snowbirds and Bedouins

If snowbirds are folks from cold areas wintering in warm areas, what do you call folks from hot areas summering in cool areas? 

Bedouins?

When Shari and I first moved to Tucson, it was mostly for winters. Summers we spent at our house on Whidbey Island. After three years of seasonal migrations, we settled on Baja Arizona and sold our house on Whidbey.

We'd visit Lower Alaska maybe for a couple of weeks in autumn. My last visit was October two years ago. We had fog so thick we didn't see the sun for several days.

This year we're visiting in high summer when afternoons are sunny and hot, locals party for Seafair and get sunburned, and mornings and evenings are moderate enough to wear short pants and sleeves — it's all just like Tucson most of the year.

It's a rural environment on Whidbey Island, isolated by a long wait to get on a ferry boat. Yesterday, the wait was four hours. That's eight ferry boats. There are plenty of weekenders, but the Island is still rustic.

I was walking Nazar this morning, savoring the cool, fresh air of rural Whidbey, enjoying the sunshine, green vegetation, and blue sky. I remembered why we tried the snowbird lifestyle in the first place, migrating like geese over Nevada.

We tried living in two homes in order to savor the best of two very different yet equally beautiful worlds. We boast about the Sonoran Desert, but we still love a rural Lower Alaska that's very familiar and nurturing.

And if staying at Dodi's house overlooking Holmes Harbor is the equivalent of a Bedouin tent, sign me up for Arabic classes.