There is a tattered yet precious book on my shelf, with its spine discoloured by age and one corner of its faded blue-green cover gnawed away by some long-forgotten pet. It is "Water Wonders Every Child Should Know: Dew, Frost, Snow, Ice and Rain" by Jean M. Thompson, and although its lavish photo-micrographs are only black-and-white, they are still acknowledged today as some of the finest taken in their time.

My copy of this little volume is 90 years old, passed down to me from my mother's own childhood, and it was one of the first books I held in my infant hands. Its text is suited to much older readers both in content and vocabulary than the title suggests, ranging from the instructive, "....growth (of ice crystals) is very clearly divided into five or six types of crystalline formations...through the various stages of development as the nuclear, or smooth-edged crystal, the scalloped, the ray-like and the branching stages of growth; after which they loose their individuality by becoming solidified and merged into the solid ice form," to the more romantic, "...hoarse winds rise and rage and croon their wailing symphonies about the picturesque old gray-gabled farmhouses," with appropriate snatches of poetry quoted from the masters here and there. An amazingly broad education is offered in its pages, acquainting the reader with culture side by side with scientific data, unlike the texts of today which deal with bare facts and figures and have no undercurrents with which to capture the interest of inquisitive young minds.

My own young mind was ensnared not only by the archaic and quaint language of the century's turn (the book was first published in 1907), but by the wealth of fascinating images of snow rollers, dumb-bell shaped snow crystals, feathered ice formations, bowl-shaped hailstones and the like. Long before I could fully comprehend the odd-sounding words which described trigonal formations and granular crystallization, I would sit for hours studying their micrographs.

I had in my possession a 300x microscope and would catch snowflakes on its slides, even though it meant sitting in the cold to view their unique, spectacular beauty in its short tenure on the glass. Advised by the book, I would first chill the slide in the refrigerator's freezer, then race outside and try to catch any of the smaller flakes as they descended, then hurry to mount the slide under the lens before my hand's heat could warm the plate. The 'scope was illuminated only by a flashlight beam and daylight, a far cry from optimal conditions, and although I never saw any of the more remarkable oddities of Nature which the book portrayed nor indeed any perfect formations, I was delighted with the wonders I had been privileged to witness.

In my later years of mountaineering, my ascents took me among sights "Water Wonders" never described: sun cups as tall as a man, the striations of glacial ice compacted in annual layers like the rings of trees and a vast field of corn snow, treacherous as a slope covered in ball bearings, yet none has passed my eye without the memory of this book coming into mind. It may have played a role in my decision to become a climber, this treasured volume, driving me to seek the perpetual winter of the high summits with the steadfast tenacity which is the trademark of an alpinist's life. Its yellowing pages still guide me into mysteries beyond its fundamental instruction as I flip open to a random page and read, "...silence settles over all, unbroken save perhaps by a straggling flight of crows winging their way heavily to safe shelter among the distant forest of pines."

As a person who normally gets up with or before the dawn, these chill mornings find me snuggling deeply into the folds of the electric blanket and hesitant to crawl from bed. The nighttime setting of 64° on the thermostat seems to leave the house colder than it did in autumn, the drafts keen and biting where they sneak beneath the covers, but no thought plays a greater role than this in my reluctance to face the day:

The Coldest Place on Earth

Many's the time I've made a climb
Into the land of ice and snow,
And endured the chill of my own free will
Where I'd chosen to go.

I've knocked my knees at ten degrees,
Shivering inside a tent,
Slept on the ground with frost all 'round
And did it without lament.

And like a fool, in a highland pool,
I've swum amid floating floes,
Turned myself blue in the process too,
Except for my rosy nose.

I've paid the cost of the bite of frost,
And sacrificed some skin
When the summit's call meant giving all
And never giving in.

And yet I dread getting out of bed
From under the blanket's heat.
I am not pleased when I have to freeze
My dainty little feet.

It's metal, the tub, and there's the rub,
For behind the shower door
Each morning I face the most chilly place:
That cold, cold bathtub floor!

Dove grey skies have spent their energies for the moment, and a foot of snow is streaked with fierce brilliance where the sun carves openings in the cloud. The brief, relative warmth has given power lines good reason to shrug off their icy coats and the fenceposts cause to doff their hats, though still the evergreens cling tightly to their trappings, as if aware that the next spate of flakes must keep to its appointed schedule.

It is powdery, this snow. It kicks up in puffs of spindrift at the slightest interruption. A junco's tiny weight sends an avalanche tumbling from the summit of the bird feeder, the brush of a wing featherdusts the contorted filbert's branches, and the hapless finch landing in the yard disappears into white quicksand, only to emerge with an indignant chirp and flutter a second later, confused. A Steller's jay is not so polite and curses prodigiously when the footing proves unreliable, unintentionally shooting through and off the far side of the feeding station in a mist of glittering crystals. The wrens are wiser and patrol close to the foundation, leaving checkered footprints behind the protection of toppled delphiniums and hellebore as they search for insects and the last of autumn's broadcast seeds. A solitary towhee crashes through the berm of snow mounted on a cedar rail and heads off in embarrassment to a nearby tree.

A freshening of feed improves the jay's cranky mood, and soon his fellows come to table beside him to gobble down sunflower seed until a red-shafted flicker takes possession of the platform, its freckled body filling the small confines of the covered tray. A battle of beaks is waged by two blue rivals on its roof, but the flicker cannot be bothered to give them any notice, and neither will dare challenge this woodpecker's cousin whose beak is twice as thick and long as theirs.

Soon after the supply has been replenished, the yard is pocked with bird tracks as the younger and more timid members of the flock search for scattered millet and sunflower seed around the feeder's base. Yet there is little need for competition here. As the next course of flakes begins to fall, the guests are leaving one by one, each with a bulging crop: the tithe I offer in return for the birds' bright company outside my window.

Only my footprints mark a path through the night's snowfall, a line of scuffs cutting an erratic arc from sidewalk's end to driveway where I pass through bent on photography during a pre-dawn shower. The shadows lurk deeply blue in the wake of my boots; the light is cold and the beauty austere. Silence is my companion, the muffle of the white blanket stilling all sound with the cautionary whisper of its flakes. A morning in the snow is like no other: calm and absolute, soulful in its mystery. My line of footprints is an offense. I should not have sullied this snow with my presence.

As if in answer to my unspoken confession of guilt, a new shower comes hard to fill in the traces of my transgression and now only a pattern of dimples remain unforgiven. The bumpy yard is more impious than I, with its cocky and sassy spikes of hawkbeard which are too willful to bow easily to the snow's first demand. A subsequent shower tames the weeds' conceit, and watchful clouds play chaperone over further displays of vanity on their behalf.

The trees are dressed in their Christmas-card clothes, each branch, limb and twig carrying its surfeit of white silence, bearing their enigmatic gift into this wintery sanctuary. Surrounded here by tranquillity and a certain solemnity despite the last traces of my footprints on the carpet, I feel the quiet of this snow within my soul.

Clip-clip-clip! Up the hill the snowplow goes, engaged in a favourite early-season sport: chipping road diddits off bare pavement with the blade. Road diddits...I'm given to understand that they're called 'reflectors' if you live in Georgia...are those little bumps along the center line which help keep night drivers on their true course, named for the sound they make when run over: diddit-diddit-diddit! or in this case, clip-clip-clip! as they pop off and go flying toward the ditch. Lest anyone think I am unjustly maligning the driver of the plow, rest assured I have it on good authority from a neighbour who pilots just such a machine for the Department of Transportation that this is indeed a game the plowman plays, else why would he be grading a dry, bare stretch of asphalt and only with the blade down when in the cover of dusk or darkness?

Another popular seasonal pastime is Mash-the-Mailbox, again a nighttime hobby. Along the straight 55 mph stretches of roadway, the plow is driven at 70 mph or more in order to throw the bulk of snow with as much force as possible to achieve the greatest distance. Points, Tom assures me, are accrued by passing as closely as possible to mailboxes and destroying them with sheer power of the snow's impact without nicking them with the blade, which would disqualify the "kill." A skilled player can take out singles with ease; triples such as those belonging to Clyde, Dennis and myself are harder to eliminate with a single blow, requiring some finesse of angle which is not always possible to achieve.

You might think that the DoT would be liable for this wanton, semi-licensed vandalism by its employees, but no one has yet filed a successful claim against the county despite repeated offenses. Many locals have given up their rural mail, preferring to have it delivered to safer post office boxes. Others have contrived to snowplow-proof their property with bars, straps, welded screens of horseshoes with some small measure success. For now, the two boxes on the downhill end of our grouping are protected by the first (Clyde's) which was flattened several years ago, never to be replaced. Mine is bent but closes, Dennis' will not close securely. Nevertheless, they have enjoyed a greater survival rate than the innocent diddits which only last night were wiped out almost to a man, ensuring the plowman's summer employment on the crew which will be charged with their reinstallation.

In 1969, some little fly-by-night, hole-in-the-wall operation called my mother with an invitation to view their product line. She was old enough to know better and I should have been, but as a young wife of two years who had yet to experience the pitfalls of credit buying and or telephone solicitations, I tagged along on my mother's heels when she went to the address we had been given: a one-room office in a small strip mall, empty but for a table and three chairs.

The proprietor seated us and went promptly into his spiel with nothing on display except a three-ring binder filled with glossy printed pages touting a variety of goods from leather coats to vacuum cleaners. My mother's interest was particularly drawn to a set of "waterless" cookware, new to the market in those days and rather expensive, and my eye was caught by a sewing machine which purportedly did everything the current Singer did and more. The salesman went on to explain that although the machine was produced overseas (read, "in the Orient"), its parts were Singer-interchangeable. Furthermore, it carried a 25-year guarantee against breakage, as did the cookware.

Innocent of the sales tactic about to be used on us, my mother and I inquired the price of the two items, only to be told that the company only sold package deals of any three products...three...for $650. That was a lot of money in that era, but still a good price, considering. We said we'd like to think about it for a couple of days, but the salesman responded quickly that it was a one-time offer. Oh, how gullible we were! We put our heads together, hashed it over and decided to split a set of fire alarms between us in addition to the sewing machine and waterless cookware, each to pay half the asking price. We were promised delivery within two weeks, signed a one-year credit contract with the company, and out the door we went.

Surprisingly, our goods were at the shop when we visited the office fourteen days later, although at the end of the following week, the office had been vacated and looked as if it had never been occupied. Only then did either of us feel any sense of misgiving, so blindly trusting as we had been.

However, the story doesn't end the way you might think it would, given this dubious history. My mother's set of waterless cookware served her well up until her last days. I constructed hundreds of garments on the sewing maching, many of heavy fabrics or leather. It has never been serviced, other than a routine oiling by the owner (something I had neglected for the last fifteen years and had to attend to before I could finish the morning's mending), and even more amazingly (knock on wood), it still is powered by its original drive belt. Emdeko did not believe in planned obsolescence.

For all of how seriously it was snowing when I left home on Thanksgiving morning, only half an inch lay on the ground twenty four hours later. At this point, it could be called pretty, although cowlick tufts of grass stick up through it and the grey asphalt shows as an unsightly gash. It's not something you'd put on a Christmas card, not this little dusting. Total concealment of the ragged pasture, sagging roofs and weathered cedar fenceposts wading knee-deep are what define a snowfall's beauty, but this will do for the moment. It is just November, after all.

November snow at my previous residence was a fairly reliable indicator of the remainder of the winter's weather. I lived in Flatland in those days, and sure as the flakes would fly around Thanksgiving, not another fleck of snow would follow unless it turned up as a spit in late March which never stuck to the ground. A fan of the down from Mother Nature's featherbed, I used to dread those November snows, counting down the days in the hopes we'd make it through the month without the stuff appearing because then (maybe, possibly) a white Christmas might be waiting in the wings. It was trustworthy, if one was willing to forgive its misjudgment once a decade, reliable nine times out of ten, but even a mere skift of flakes would prove enough to hoodoo January, as I recorded time and time again.

Here in the mountains, it's a different story. The Thanksgiving week snow shower has become almost a tradition, but it tells nothing, gives no clue, as ineffectual a prognosticator as this present thin blanket is at hiding molehills where it rests in tatters in the yard.

Twenty-three hundred miles away, roosters called me into morning.

It's a good Thanksgiving, and I am greatly blessed.

Year after year, my hunting neighbour Clyde has gone out at the start of elk season with high ideals, braving the inclemencies of Pacific Northwest weather, only to return at its close dispirited and with an empty bag. I will say that to his credit, he is more selective about what he shoots than the average hunter in the area, and more conscientious with regard to taking shots which he knows will be quick to kill his animal, unlike many who will fire at the first sign of horns. Yes, I would call Clyde an outdoorsman of the first water, knowledgeable in the forest, prudent in his practices, but still it bothered me that eight years could pass without fresh meat coming home to table.

Three weeks ago, I saw his partner's truck pull into the driveway with a magnificent rack of horns displaying above the pickup's box, a "five by six," as such things are described. Jerry had got his elk on opening day, and had come to borrow Clyde's ATV to drag the bull's carcase out from where it had fallen, an estimated 450 pounds without the hide. Not much of a meat eater myself, I was drooling at the thought of this particular flavour. Elk is one exception I allow into my diet. I held out a small hope that Clyde would take a portion of the meat for helping his companion process his kill, and that some portion thereof might trickle down my way as it has done in other years. I did not know then that my neighbour had been with him when the animal had been taken, nor that Clyde had also tagged a "four by five" the following Monday and that there was plenty of elk to go around.

My neighbour is quite famous hereabouts for his recipes, and I am not the only one who stands with outstretched hand when the smokehouse door is opened. Only this morning, I'd seen him head that way with a bowl of something underneath his arm and the alder smoke curling out of the stovepipe already. Later, when he jumped the fence today with a sack in his hand to tell me the story, I was guessing sausage or jerky, still warm from preparation. I peered inside the sack. It was a steak about the size of a good top round.

As I catch up to the rest of civilization by reading the last two weeks' papers, accounts of the flood damage to Mt. Rainier National Park chill me. The principle focus of the reports has covered the southwest corner where just beyond the Nisqually Entrance (the only entrance open in wintertime), the ground which once held Sunshine Point campground washed completely away, carrying trees and structures with it. Power and sewer lines were severed, some sections of the paved road have been obliterated, and several creeks have diverted into newly formed courses, threatening other sections of the road as well. As repairs continue with tons of rock being moved daily to fill in and rebuild, the Park is not expected to reopen until Christmastime (if then), and that with only limited facilities.

With a budget of $3 million in reserve for such disasters, the Park will certainly need to apply for emergency funding just to restore access to Paradise where a new visitor center is in the process of being built, but this corner was not the only area hard-hit by the floods. On the southeast side, multiple landslides block the highway or have ripped away new gullies as deep as 80 feet which now will have to be bridged. On the northwest corner (Carbon River, my old district), two miles of the gravel access road are gone, as is Ipsut campground at its end, with the river now running where it once was set among the trees. Given the fact that for many years, Park Service has considered closing the Carbon River Road permanently due to the cost of its maintenance, I am certain that it will never be reopened; likewise the Westside Road which has in years past been subject to Tahoma Creek's fury.

The damage which occurred to the trail system and the backcountry campgrounds accessible only to hikers has not yet been assessed, and this will bring another burden to the expense account as additional personnel will need to be hired to effect timely repairs. Although backcountry access would be a lower priority than other tourist draws, lack of it could significantly impact the number of visitors coming into the Park to feed an already belaboured budget. As fees were increased over the last several years, visitation had declined markedly already.

The face of the Park has changed, and despite the best efforts of Man to forestall another such disaster, he cannot hold against Nature forever. After years of being treated too casually by tourists, the Mountain is now reclaiming its own.

The Mountain's bowl has filled with snow again, and now stacked lenticular cloud hangs on the three summits like a broad-brimmed hat, casting shadows on the craggy countenance. Where some slopes lie in sunlight, they are brilliant, glossed with ice and sleek with its sheen where they reflect the sky. The view is far from static. The cloud formation spreads, shrinks, heaps and collapses within the few seconds I look away, in one moment sharply outlined and in the next, blurry and indistinct as if Mountain and cloud were one entity presenting different faces like a model: happy, pensive, shy or coy behind the veil. Then in a whimsy, a small puff of dark, low cloud pops up from behind the evergreen ridgeline like a tiny terrier, laughing and full of play.

We rail against the weather, we Northwesterners, but it is weather which gives our environment its life and character. Regrettably, it sometimes also gives our lives their moods. Change is both expected and agreeable, whether for bad or better, simply to have some variation in the theme. When either sun or rain overstay their welcome, our social courtesies may lapse as we wait for them to depart the premises, so even a rainy day following prolonged sun may be greeted as a guest. Today, I am enjoying the Mountain's frolic with the clouds.

Half an inch of rain has fallen since I emptied the gauge this morning and the view of standing pools in my driveway tells a story. The ground is supersaturated now, having absorbed all it can hold in its upper layers, and this rain...this drenching rain...has nowhere to go but down the slopes as direct runoff. It is this rain which will scour trees from hillsides, send mudslides crashing, even if it does not bring the rivers back up to flood stage once again.

With the freezing level rising and heavy snow at the middle elevations, I'm reminded of the previous floods which nearly swept my mother's little river cabin away on their tide. Twice in 29 years, she was forced to evacuate, but on other occasions she stubbornly refused to budge even when the water was lapping at the boards of her deck.

She bought her place on a small creek in southwest Washington one summer and was not informed that it sat on a seven-year flood plain, nor did she think to ask. The river was scenic and serene, running only a few feet deep at most in a ten-foot deep channel. The neighbourhood kids would wade across it during the salmon run in the fall to scoop the big fish out from the deeper holes and hold them up in their arms. The run would often thrash the water as the spawning fish headed upstream, their bellies rubbing gravel and their fins standing above the surface. Later, the winter rains would bring the river up six feet or so, still well within its banks and not posing any threat.

Then one year, an early snowfall blanketed the hills above the headwaters, only to be followed by a torrent of rain and high freezing level which melted all the snow and turned the river muddy. Debris from logging operations washed down in the runoff, choked up at an already existing beaver dam downstream of my mother's home. Before long, the flow backed up, filling the open pasture between her house, washing out the community's gravel access road and cutting her off from the highway even as the main channel's level rose higher and encroached upon her yard.

Her first experience with a flood was an eye-opener, but it passed without damaging her property or imperilling her life. In subsequent floods, she was not so lucky. The house's skirting washed away, her propane tank shifted on its blocks, and twice she had to have footings replaced when the water etched away the soil beneath them as it rose to the level of her deck, two or three feet above the surface of the yard.

The seven-year flood plain lived up to its name, with the heavier floods coming every ten years or so. She never considered moving, my uniquely obstinate mother, content to live with rising waters and to find some minor amusement in the odd things she saw floating past her doorstep: whole trees, or trees that looked like Viking ships, or someone's rowboat or a bloated cow. That, and the occasional piggyback ride to safety kept her entertained.

Washington's Department of Fish and Wildlife has been working for many years to re-establish the naturally-occurring salmon runs of yesteryear in the state's rivers and smaller streams, while at the same time providing sports fishermen with greater opportunities to catch the Northwest's most popular fish through creating "put-and-take" fisheries, i.e. farm-raised fish trucked to popular fishable waters and released specifically with the angler in mind. If readers thinks the two ideals seem somewhat at odds with each other, they would be correct. In practice, the fisherman has been the primary beneficiary and few (if any) salmon have survived the tangle of hooks to go upstream to spawn. Illegal methods for taking fish have accounted for the majority of catches, as well as over-limit fishing and (to a lesser extent) fishing in closed waters.

Part of the problem lies in the dates set for the season, which opens before the fish start to make their annual spawning run. When they come in from the sea, the banks of the rivers are already lined with fishermen, and the flow rate is generally still at its low point, water clear and slow-running, conditions which favour the 'snagger' all too well. Such has certainly been the case on my favourite stream, although last year, the WDFW made a sweep which eliminated many of the prime offenders. Even so, the fish remain too vulnerable under these water conditions, inclined to make the sprint upstream only when the rivers run faster and more deeply.

Salmon season in my area had only just begun when Washington's record rains began falling at the end of October. The creek was at a significant low. No fish had been trucked from the collection point at the dam on the major river yet, although a creel census showed that a few were being caught in the area. Then, within a very few days, the rivers were in flood stage, making bank access impossible and boating dangerous. A limited number of fish were captured at the fish ladder and transported to the smaller streams, but fishermen, legal or not, were at a decided disadvantage as the floodwaters ripped through every river in the western half of the state.

Many of the rivers have now changed their courses, exposing new areas of gravel and sand in which the salmon spawn. New channels have been cut, including one which took out my favourite riffle along with a portion of the campground adjacent to it, and where once my stream flowed a mere ten feet wide, it is now broader than an average cast. Several of the popular holes upstream of it have filled in with debris and new lairs have been etched out along hard-to-access banks, protected by cliffs and brush and "private property" signs. It is the fish who have the upper hand now, as the first explorers of the new territory. As they establish their new breeding grounds in the flood-ravaged reaches, it will be hard luck for the fisherman, but at least for this first year, the salmon may stand a fighting chance.

Ask a group of little kids what they want to be when they grow up, and one of them is bound to say, "A forest ranger!" Yep, Smokey is an idol for many youngsters, all right, and a good many adults will assert that the ranger's employment falls in the category of 'glamour jobs,' right alongside anything else which puts its professional into uniform. That bright badge shines mighty bright when the sun's on it, y'know, and nobody's homely in a beaver hat, but the truth of the matter runs a good bit deeper.

I've been thinking about my years in Park Service as I sit here glowering at the continuing fall of rain, remembering the patrols of miles and miles and miles in endless, drenching downpour, recalling the mud and the chill and dragging my sorry, soaked carcase into the clammy interior of my duty station, only to find that the person I was replacing had left me no cut firewood. I'd been too bedraggled to notice the rainbow ranks of wildflowers lining the trail, too weary to lift my eyes to the peaks of the evergreens where they pierced the grey cloud which hid the touted vistas, my mind's eye fixed only on the relative comfort of a cold cabin and a rough bunk where I could drop and sleep until the mice waked me, running across my face.

Officially, I served three summers and at least five winters at a backcountry cabin adjacent to one of the more popular drive-to campgrounds where I gave nature walks, campfire chats, wrote permits and made thousands of visitor contacts as a smiling, cheerful representative of the Park. Glamourous enough, though on the flip side, I often dealt with knife fights, drunkards, poachers, rebels against the system, brainless idiots who thought they knew all about alpine mountaineering because they'd climbed a rock or two, and even the occasional rude tourist who refused to pick up his litter, citing that it was 'dirty' once it had left his hand and landed on the ground.

At various times, I worked clearing a logjam in the lake's outlet, standing waist-deep in icy water, wrestling timber with a peavey, hauled out heavy iron fire grates on my back, carried emergency supplies in on snowshoe only to have them stolen by snowmobilers the following week. I cleaned outhouses and fire pits, gathered litter, repaired trail, handled dangerous chemicals in the chlorinator shed, none of which fell under the terms of my job description but needed to be done and timely. I was waked by visitors at any hour of the night, on call to handle whatever emergency might come up, even to rout the raccoon who had chosen to visit the food left out on the terrified camper's picnic table.

There were rewards, too...the hiker who 'lifted' one of my canned sodas while I was on patrol and left me twice the going price in change, the Girl Scouts who enlisted my aid in devising tricks to play on their Scout leader (cold spaghetti in the sleeping bag was one), the bright bespectacled girl of six years who could cite scientific names of more wildflowers than were in my own knowledge, the fishermen who brought the ranger a dinner of fresh trout. More than once, I took tea with backpackers who sought a spare moment's shelter beneath the cabin's porch roof, sharing in their stories of parks beyond my own in a fellowship brought about by that selfsame weather which so often was a plague.

Oh, yes, those were the ranger years, all right! And truth to tell? Although you couldn't get me to hike in the rain today, I'd gladly pin the badge on again and take up where I left off in my 'glamour job,' all things considered.

The lake is brown and clogged with debris from the flooding, islands of timber floating like dumplings on a thick, muddy soup. Along the northwest shore, a drift of roots, branches and whole trees has piled against the bank to form a mass which will eventually shift and find its course to come up against the log boom preventing most of it from reaching the dam. There is one small breach in the boom to allow boat traffic through, but it too will block up as the winds shift and must be kept clear by the maintenance personnel for the utility which owns the reservoir.

Only two weeks ago, the lake level was near its minimum leaving a vast plain of mud from shore to shore. It's an ugly sight, that, as opposed to the broad expanse of fine fishin' water which ordinarily fills the basin to a common depth of fifteen feet in summer. However, its let-down has been the saving factor for several small communities below the paired hydroelectric plants on the river which cuts through a deep, unpopulated canyon between the two dams, carved there in geologic time with a much higher rate of flow. The canyon would be able to accommodate an even higher flood stage without particular harm, but the utility must regulate the flow through both dams in order to mitigate its effects lower down. The balancing act is not always as successful as it has been through this latest crisis, and often both the small towns and the delta have experienced severe flooding when management misjudged the volume of water expected from any given storm.

The worst floods tend to come on the heels of a heavy snow, unlike this one which was entirely rain-generated. When a warming trend comes on the heels of a significant snowfall, the resulting melt quickly takes the lake to a level which cannot be managed by the dams and water must be let over the spillways. This is also the time when the lesser rivers and creeks will be most affected, contributing additional runoff to the major rivers already at flood stage. Of course, in this last period of precipitation, snow fell at the higher elevations proportional to the rain. With the lake now at its present high level, another warm, wet system would be disastrous. This may yet prove to be one of Washington's worst flood years on record.

A sneaky devaluation of the pound has taken place over the last few decades, and no, I'm not talking about currency. I mean weight. I don't mean that an ounce is no longer an ounce because as far as I know, that's still 28 grams and a fraction. I'm talking about that three-pound can of coffee in your hand.

Used to be 48 ounces, good old "sixteen times three" filled the tin up chock-full. Then some enterprising marketer decided it could be shortened up a few scoops, and even if the public noticed, nobody would particularly care (or if John Q. did, he'd be helpless to complain as it became the standard). As I recall, that first reduction wasn't much...maybe an ounce and a half, down to 46.5. The conspirators in this dastardly and devious plot retained the can's original size, citing that it would be too costly to revise the processing equipment. "Well, it's only an ounce and a half," we said, and bought both the grounds and the bill of goods we'd been handed.

The next subtraction in weight was more substantial, maybe another four ounces. Can sized stayed the same, and so did our euphemism, "three-pound can of coffee." We were lying to ourselves every time we wrote it on the grocery list. That 42 ounces was no more "three pounds" than the Man in the Moon, and the little bit of nitrogen they pumped inside to keep the flavour fresh hardly made up for the fact that the price stayed pat under pretext of inflation and a crisis in the crop of mountain grown.

The next change was visible. The "three-pound can" shrank an inch in height. The decrease to 39 ounces was hardly noticed by the consumer who opened it and saw it as fuller than the last can he'd bought. Stinky, mean and nasty, that bit of work! But the eye feeds the mind, and both are gullible, as any advertiser knows. "Settling of contents post-manufacture" can't account for that large a gap 'twixt rim and grind.

Well, last week, I had coffee on my shopping list. The heft felt wrong when I lifted the can down from Safeway's shelf. "Oh!" I said, as I looked down at the lid. "They're sealing them with foil now, conserving on steel," a thoughtful gesture toward the ecology (or so I justified). The can size was the same as the 39-ounce model, and it wasn't until I opened it that I noticed my "three-pound can" of coffee now contains a mere 34.5 ounces.

How long will it be before some clever marketer decides to start offering coffee in genuine three-pound cans again? Those of us who prefer to buy larger quantities of our favourite beverage would certainly appreciate an honest measure of the bean.

Inside the house, the thermometer registers at 71° (a supposedly comfortable temperature), but as I look out the window at the nearby hills with their dust of newly fallen snow, the goosebumps rise on my arms. I am not feverish beneath the heavy fleece jacket, only chilled by the intangible ambience thrown by sky and slope as they take on the shades of winter. It is pervasive, this sense of cold. It penetrates the walls and hangs in the air like the bitter breath of age.

Another telltale: the towhees have come in to strip the garden of the seed flung wide by the cosmos and the asters, scavenging the smaller fare in preference to the millet in the feeders, seeking it with eyes as red as the berries of the wintergreen. The birds have heard the story the weather reads aloud, and thus gather to the warmest hearth to tuck up in its shelter as the myth is proven true: the clouds shall fall to earth and the hills shall wear their garment. White winter is coming down.

The stars are dull with time, the fabric saddened by its duty.
The flag is faded, and just yesterday,
My father's eyes were brown and bright with youth.
I take his honours in my hands,
And weep the tears of half a century.
Where are his fields and his farmland? Fallen fallow.
Where is the life he gave his plantings? Gone into the dust.
Where is the life he gave his country? Sung into an untimely grave.
Behind the faded stars and colours,
I am the solitary keeper of his living memory.
In my ending, his spirit will vanish from the earth.

I suppose it's only logical that as the next front marshalls its resources and prepares to blast the Pacific Northwest with another charge of rain, my thoughts should turn to a sunnier venue, or it could be a hankering for the flaky, white filets hidden somewhere beneath the kokanee and trout in the deepest recess of my freezer which reminds me of the ocean waves and the surf perch lurking in the lee of the jetty. In any event, for several days, surf fishing has been on my mind, a sport gas prices kept me from enjoying this last year.

The gear is the simplest part of the equation. A salmon rod will do, rigged with ten-pound mono line and a reel dedicated to corrosive salt water. The leader is specific: a surf rig comprised of three feet of metal line with two droppers, a terminal snap to hold a one-ounce weight. The easiest method for setting up is to use pre-snelled hooks (tie your own or purchase them), and you will want plenty because you will be casting quite close to the rocks. At $2.95 a dozen, it will be more economical if you dig your own bait with a clam gun. This is a back-breaking labour and can only be done at low tide but, conveniently, The Bite will be on the incoming tide just as it approaches its peak. If you still have the strength to cast after digging at least a hundred sand shrimp, you're good to go.

The fisherman's timing, on the other hand, must be impeccable. A tide table is mandatory, as the hours of low and high tide are only one factor to consider. Height of the sea is critical, and fishing should be done when the gap between high and low are greatest, hopefully to coincide with one of the peak highs of the year.

Sand shrimp (the preferred bait) resemble a crawdad and provide one of the principle sources of food for the 1-1.5 pound fish, second only to barnacles which are not reasonable for the angler to collect. Clam necks may be used instead and are more likely to stay on the hook especially if tied, and jumbo prawns will do in a pinch, but they are also rather too expensive, all things considered. Wave action accounts for as much lost bait as do actual bites, and the wily surf perch is particularly adept at sucking bait without so much as a trace of a tug being evident to the fisherman.

The drab-coloured sand shrimp inhabit the mud flats where clams and scallops are also found, but the seasons for shellfish and surf perch seldom overlap. They are dug with the gun (a tube of metal, 4" or greater in diameter with a T-shaped handle) using a sudden thrust to its two-foot depth in the mud, followed by a laborious extraction. Yield per plunge generally never exceeds three shrimp, and each may be broken into two pieces. A hundred will provide approximately two hours' fishing pleasure since the hook will need to be rebaited on almost every cast.

The surf fisherman may or may not wear waders, depending on conditions. I have always enjoyed the rare sunny day at Washington's beaches for my sport, and prefer to wear a heavy layer of sunscreen with shorts and a long-sleeved shirt as I wade in to my knees to make my cast as close to the jetty as possible. It is here that the fish feed, hunting barnacles on the lee side of the rocks. The tidal action makes it difficult to detect a bite, so it is prudent to set the hook at the slightest tug. When a fish is hooked, it will tend to run crossways to the surges, providing a much greater fight than its relatively small size would suggest. A surf perch is not a leaper like a trout but will give as much sport, knowing how to use its environment to greatest advantage.

A variety of fishes may come in alongside the target species, some desirable and some not. The dogshark is one of the most common and least wanted. Flounder and sole appear less frequently, and rarely cabezon may be caught to give a gourmet treat of its pale aqua blue flesh which whitens upon cooking. The roe of cabezon is toxic and care must be exercised in cleaning them.

For the times I have spent knee-deep in surf and getting sunburned, my score for the two-hour tidal change has ranged from skunked to thirty on any given day. Although surf perch might be peasant fare when compared to halibut or salmon, they are a delight to catch and a challenge to the angler's skill as well as being tasty. Maybe it's time to defrost the freezer after all.

Although the weather keeps us in ignorance of its schedule, the chill today forecasts a just-around-the-corner imminence to complement the northern blue, pale and patchy among the clouds. It makes its pronouncement in clear syllables, the warning implicit: the tenure of autumn is done and winter is in its ascension to the throne.

Sun, that odd light in the sky which has not been seen for many days, now pierces the hummocked cumulus surrounding the Mountain and shows something which crept in at the rain's back to take possession of the foothills' peaks. The great Presence to the east is not the only figure with a cloak of white around its shoulders, no. Among the piled batts of cloud, the upland crags display a garb of ermine and the evergreen boughs are bent earthward beneath a coronation cloth of new and deeply fallen snow. Silent and stealthy and determined, winter seeks to usurp the reigning season and to seize the valley for its fief. Benevolent or no, the despot holds the serfs in thrall.

Well, as floods go, this one ain't much, though I could hear the river pounding as I marched down the back of Dan's property in my gumboots, aiming for the riverbar. After four days of steady rain, yesterday she came a gullywasher, dumped 2.60" in the pluviometer and the weather department issued flood warnings for most rivers in the western part of the state. A right frog-strangler, as they say, so I headed down to the river via the back path, hoping to take pictures to keep my Georgia man amused. Oh yes, it was still raining, and hard. Got over the first crossing on a stick after getting mired in the slop of a little mudflow on the first try, but the second? Little side stream which normally wouldn't have wet the tops of your shoes was flowing muddy, fast, and a good eighteen inches deep, so that was where I dead-ended.

Undeterred, I went overland along the back of Ole Tom's Place, sweeping aside scotch broom which towered over my head, slipping in the wet fall of alder leaves, clambering through a boulder field covered with the local version of kudzu (sweet pea vines) until after almost getting my foot trapped between two hidden rocks, I finally reached the side of the railroad trestle which spans one of the Mountain's great rivers. Fought blackberries to get up the steep, short slope to the tracks, and cast a baleful eye toward the backside of the "No Trespassing" sign which had prevented me from taking that route in the first place.

Below the first part of the span (a wooden bridge with a walkway), the side stream had swelled and was now running as a second channel of the river, leaving islands of alder standing in the bends of its café-au-lait coloured braid. The main flow had broadened to encompass most but not all of its bed, roiling over any obstruction in its path, tumbling huge boulders beneath its surface with dull, growling sounds which could be felt as well as heard as they transmitted through the superstructure of the bridge. Waves mounted against the concrete footings, and the bank had been etched away into sharp cliffs on either end of the second metal span, a stretch which had collapsed in the Flood of '96 due to debris build-up against its upper side. Downed timber was building against the pilings, and in the center of the metal bridge, a Doug fir had fallen some time since Sunday when I'd last heard the train pass through.

As I stood there taking pictures, the rain was still coming down hard, and I had no intention of tackling the back route home again. Figured as long as I hadn't officially read that "No Trespassing" sign, I could be excused for coming up behind it now that my mission was complete.

Rings and chains form in my fingers as they fly in one of few needlearts not learned at my grandmother's knee, for she had no ken of the tatting shuttle nor its knotted threads and picot joins. In essence simple, in practice not so, I had failed many times to master the skill through written instruction and only when employed as a needlework consultant in my eighteenth year did I find a person who could teach me the art. Shoba Devi's patience with me is something for which I wish I could now thank the East Indian woman, for this simple pastime has rewarded me with many fancy laces and enjoyable hours through the years.

Tatting (or 'frivolity' as it is sometimes called) resembles crochet it first glance, however most pieces are made with two running threads, one each from ball and shuttle. It consists of simple half-hitches, much like macramé but made on a much smaller scale. It is in the making of the rings that the beginner is most likely to err, for with the thread looped around the hand, the shuttle passes over and under it to form the knots with a snapping motion which transfers the bend from the running thread to the looped thread so that the running thread becomes a core. One knot left in the running thread in error, and the ring made of half-hitches cannot be drawn up properly and closed.

As with many crafts which people find difficult to effect, tatting is on its way to becoming a lost art, so one year, I attempted to teach a class through a local fabric store. The venture was a smashing failure. Despite taking the hands of my pupils and forcing them to perform the stitches correctly and repeatedly, not one of the students was able to create a functional ring once I had walked away. For the longest time, I faulted myself as teacher although I have taught other needlearts with great success, and only after giving individual instruction to a friend and having her master tatting with relative ease was I finally satisfied that perhaps the fault was not entirely my own.

Today I sit watching the rain fall in torrents, my tatting shuttle slipping through the threads twined in my fingers as if empowered by some spirit of bygone days. A sadness falls with the grey rain, a sadness that I can find no other to whom to pass this fading skill. Under the shadow of technology, no one cares for frivolity these days.

Smoke from the neighbour's chimney drifts lazily across the fence, barely skimming the top wire on a downdraft and bent on a clandestine mission: the invasion of the crawlspace beneath my house. Its first incursion of the year always surprises me as it is drawn up by the furnace in the middle of the night and its faint odor is dispersed by the fan into my bedroom, but it is never long before I recognize it as the annual event from the higher note in its scent which tells of burnt junk mail. Dennis is adhering to the letter of the law which prohibits disposing of the universal plague in an outdoor fire.

With a state election only a few days away, the number of political fliers in our rural mailboxes has been growing daily and certainly among the neighbours here, quite pointlessly as well. I am not the only one who folds the glossy leaflets into a shape suitable for recycling without a glance at their content, and the only influence they might have on my decision-making process would most certainly be negative if I happened to notice the candidate they touted, based solely on the ecological insensitivity their propagandizing shows.

My sentiments run even deeper toward the canvassers who have not the common decency to provide me with a human being to curse when they wake me with a call. These I have made note of, and in every case, I have cast my vote against or not at all. Let me say this to those canned politicians who call me after bedtime: your rudeness is detrimental to your cause, your blindness to that fact shows that you are an idiot. If you wish to gain my vote, respect me and my privacy. Stay out of my bedroom, whether you intrude as a voice or a wisp of smoke from a neighbour's fire.

Weather in all its forms wields an undeniable reality which these last few days bears calling a confining rain. It has come down remorselessly, soaking its drench into the hillsides, ripening the soil to potential landslip, punishing the summer-dried earth for having discarded its memory so soon. The gutters are filling, the amœboid puddles merging, and the rivers are on the rise, prompting a flood watch in the lowlands. Still it is falling without trace of conscience, sheeting roadways with its burden which are too worn to shoo it to the swollen ditches, too wearied by its overstayed welcome and anxious to see it home.

If many of the author's perusals dwell on weather, there is good reason, for no other event touches us so regularly nor manipulates our lives with such persistent subtlety as it does. Whether outdoorsman or office worker, who does not wonder upon rising what the day's weather portends? Wind, rain, sleet or snow, it appoints us in our daily rounds surer than a clock, for the artifice of time is no more than a schedule over which we have some modicum of power. Yet we need not yield to it fully, for although we take shelter against its mood, there are comforts to be gained from its directives. Why else would a cup of hot chocolate sound so good right now?

Her paws twitch and the muscles of her back ripple, whiskers vibrate as if searching for the proper frequency on which to attune her other senses. The cat is asleep on my lap, dreaming of some pursuit, be it play or prey.

What do critters dream, I wonder? Do they experience the same random closing of synapses that humans do, those anomalies which generate piano-legged dogs and familiar faces which turn into telephones or pterodactyls? Do Skunk's sleep patrols range over fantastic shapes of furniture, or does she fancy flying after birds, soaring weightless in the sky as people sometimes dream? Are there sounds in the shadowed corners of her mind as well as images? Or tastes and smells which no human dreamer can access? The cat sleeping on my lap is clearly dreaming, and in my arrogance, I wonder: Does she dream me?

Her cheeks are pouched with a cat-smile and her mascara lines sweep upward in amusement at whatever whimsy now makes her tail tip quiver. She reaches her arm out, curls her paw around my arm and draws it closely to her face. Barely a whisper, a tiny purr shivers against my leg and I have found the answer to my question from a dream which has no words.

It was called "The Book of Knowledge." Although the volumes looked encyclopedic, they held so much more than dry histories and cold scientific facts, and any dreary day, you might hear my mother answer my plaintive, "Mama, I'm bo-o-ored!" with an injunction to pursue amusement in their pages. The set was geared to young, inquiring minds somewhat older than my own, but I had always been a forerunner in academic pursuits and had no difficulty with comprehension when reading the proper procedure for mounting a collection of butterflies, nor did I stagger at descriptions of glacial movement and the evidence it left on the earth's face. Indeed, when the skies cleared, I might next be found chasing swallowtails or examining boulders with a magnifier, so much did these books stimulate my interest in the natural world.

It was there I learned more of beadwork and basketry, of batteries and gears. I followed experiments with exotic substances like water, alcohol and salad oil to determine which floated on which, and why. Each section of instruction ended with questions far more penetrating than any asked by my grade-school teachers, calling on my brain to analyze and process what information I had discovered, and sometimes suggested carrying that new-found knowledge to another article within the books.

There were other delights interspersed among the more serious studies; parlour games to play, toys to build, arts and crafts galore, and very few of the projects would have required more than minimal adult supervision, even by today's standards. Each was illustrated by simple black-and-white line drawings which were the set's only graphics, clearly showing each step in the production of some item with which a child could entertain themselves for days beyond the time it took to construct. Yes, I sometimes made mistakes but had only to refer back to the presentation to see what had gone wrong and, through this inevitable exercise, I developed analytical skills which I use even today.

My "Book of Knowledge" went the way of all good things when I had supposedly outgrown it, but although I frequently refer to the "World Book" purchased in the year of my birth instead of the later "Encyclopedia Britannica" to look up facts, it is the plain blue set I wish I had kept these years for its wealth of information and for the friendship it gave me in my lonely, inquisitive youth.

A sudden and spirited whirlwind dashed up the bigleaf maple at the edge of the neighbour's woods, stripped it of its leaves and carried them aloft. As quickly as it had frolicked, the breath went out of it at a sigh, leaving hundreds of autumnal kites to drift like great coloured snowflakes in whatever direction they had been bound. It was a whimsy, nothing more, which disrupted the chimney smoke's lazy ascent with a spattering of golden confetti and, as the column regained its composure, only the lawns told the story of the breeze's brief jest in an irregular calico. I, the solitary witness, was amused to watch the contrary motion of the leaves fluttering skyward as the embarrassed maple's limbs bent with the wind as if to hide its nakedness from view.