Keeping spirits sunny through winter’s darkest days

Published 11:01 pm Thursday, November 13, 2008

On a miserable day of rain and dreary darkness, I barely want to look out a window. Forget putting on a jacket and stepping outside.

The downpour that flooded parts of Snohomish County this week didn’t soak me. I stayed dry, but still felt saturated — with dread. How many months are ahead of us, just like Wednesday?

I could feel it the way you know a cold is coming on. My annual and inevitable bout with seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, was dropping from the sky with all that water. As people with real problems battled high water Wednesday, I glumly glanced out the newsroom window.

Out on Everett’s W. Marine View Drive, running through the deluge, was a man in shorts and a sleeveless tank top. Drenched though he was, he looked happier than I was feeling.

Who are these people? How can the rest of us cultivate their dauntless habits?

You don’t need me telling you what a daily walk or jog can do for your health and mood.

A few years back, I interviewed Dr. David Avery, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. A pioneer in light therapy, Avery has done extensive research on winter depression.

His studies have tracked weather data and depression, finding that the sunniest days matched up with the lowest levels of depression reported by evaluators.

Yeah, yeah, you know all this. So do I. Knowing it doesn’t make it any easier to put on jackets and step outside.

Thursday, an ever-so-much nicer day than Wednesday, I drove to Mukilteo Lighthouse Park under the guise of work — what a job this is. I went looking for people who’d have the answer, who’d tell us how to stay motivated every day, rain or shine or whatever.

Mostly, I found kindred spirits, fair-weather walkers out on a beautiful day.

Tracy Beloba, a 27-year-old nanny, was at the beach playground with her three little charges. “We try to get out on any dry day,” the Edmonds woman said. A summer runner, Beloba said that when days get short, “I don’t even like to walk my dog.”

Asa and Azy Parker, an Everett couple expecting their first child, enjoyed the sun at the beach Thursday. On nasty days, Asa Parker said, “We try to go to lighter places, like the mall.”

John and Paula Leal, of Mukilteo, are more serious about a daily constitutional. “You’ve got to get out, definitely, for fitness,” said Paula Leal, 47, who was walking the couple’s Boston terrier, Max. “I get the winter blues,” said John Leal, 54, who visits the beach daily before going to work. “Just to see the Olympics, it helps,” he said.

I had to start walking to find the intrepid soul I was seeking. I walked a couple miles, along Mukilteo Boulevard into Everett. That’s where I found Geri Buttke, a 51-year-old driver for Community Transit.

With two of her five dogs, a black Labrador and a papillon, she was out for her daily run — a 10-mile daily run. From her home near the Kmart store on Evergreen Way in Everett, she usually runs to Mukilteo Lighthouse Park and back. Sometimes she goes along Everett’s waterfront to Legion Park.

“I ran yesterday,” Buttke said matter-of-factly, as if running 10 miles in torrential rain is easy as pie. “I’ve been running since 1985, I’m addicted to it,” she said.

Buttke claims that 30 years ago she weighed 275 pounds. Talking with this trim, athletic woman, who couldn’t wait to be on her way running down the boulevard, I couldn’t begin to picture her former self.

“I prefer running in the rain. I like doing what most people don’t want to do,” said Buttke, who runs several marathons each year. Working in the Middle East several years ago, Buttke said she even ran a marathon in Saudi Arabia.

“I didn’t want to be 40, fat and flabby. I wanted to be 50 and fit, and 60 and sexy. Well, I don’t know about that,” she said.

She likes it. The miles, the drizzle, the cold, none of it bothers her. SAD? Not this woman.

How does she do it? How does she lace up those shoes and run every day? In all that weather?

I tried. I asked. I’m sorry to report, I still don’t know her secret.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.