still other winters average their rain months into a long, cold season of relentless sog and little color. At such times, looking out through the spattered glass, I feel, deep in some spongy, unignorable organ, that we will have floods, and damage, and losses; we will have gray till the cows come home, and there will be no more cows--they'll all just rot, drown, or simply wash away. We will have rain until the very hills dissolve. And when the dirty cotton swaddling of fog finally falls away, we will all be desperate for vital signs.