It’s an absolutely beautiful day out here in the North American Pacific Northwest.

Rain is softly falling. It had snowed the 24 hours before, leaving a soft, wet cover of white on everything. Then the temperature moderated a bit and the rains have been falling since early morning. It is cold, of course, but not quite as cold as it has been the last week or so. The entire continent has been laboring under an apparently unusual series of winter storms.

As the rain falls it warms the snows previously fallen, and turns them to a semi-transparent state somewhere between snow and rain and ice. Somehow the cold air is colder than it must otherwise have been because it is now so blatently wet, cutting through the layers of fabric we wear to the pores of the skin, causing us to feel that going outside at all is a heartless thing to be doing – something akin to Shackleton and his crew shuffling across the antantarctic. Fortunately for us, winter’s outings are limited to short walks from the door to the car, or from the door to the garbage bin just a few feet away. Or from the door to the edge of the deck where we can watch the dog fetch the things we throw, hoping the dog will get it over with sooner rather than later – and get its piss and shit over with as expeditiously as possible to boot.

The sky is as white as the ground, which white is disappearing fast under the gentle influence of the cold, cold rain, inhospitable to man and beast alike. Everywhere now is a slush, a mush. The birds, hunkered, have nothing to say about it.

Come to think of it, though the thermometer says 40 degrees Farenheit, my entire countenance and frame says rather minus 12, or thereabouts, with humidity at 152 percent. Or something.

It’s an absolutely beautiful day.