Not much has changed

The rain has been coming down so steadily for the past day or so, I'm feeling a bit Lewis and Clarkish. Rain coming down through the blowing cottonwood tree fluff. Rain coming down through the clouds sitting on the ground and slightly above it. Rain coming down and coming down and coming down. Trees at the edge of the field against a white-gray backdrop, as if the stage set people aren't done yet. But the rain people are getting lots of practice while we wait for the mountains to show up.

On the coast, it rained, drumming a cheerless note in Clark’s journal: "rained all the after part of last night, rain continues this morning…a cool wet raney morning…eleven days rain, and the most disagreeable time I have experenced…." Still, as the expedition prepared to leave its winter headquarters at Fort Clatsop, on the southern (Oregon) side of the Columbia, on March 23, 1806, his tone was conciliatory: "at this place we had wintered and remained from the 7th of Decr. 1805 to this day and have lived as well as we had any right to expect…not withstanding the repeeted fall of rain…."

Exactly.