In the forest it sounds like it’s raining long after a heavy storm has passed.

Millions of droplets make their way leaf to leaf toward earth through a thick canopy.

No more rain falls from still pregnant clouds overhead and the puddles in the open are glass. Yet just yards away I hear a rain shower and have to stop and look. This is a rain storm on delay, nature’s protracted game of Mousetrap as water works its way to ground running over glistening leaves, dropping, following the veins and stems always downward.

Some years, the arrival of the “rainy gray” season brought me down. This year I welcome whatever the season throws at me. I feel impervious to the doldrums.

It boils down to perspective. As I said yesterday, I think that how you handle the weather is a microcosm of how you handle your entire life. While you can change your location, you certainly can’t change the weather. Knowing this, do we spend our time lamenting that which is out of our hands, complaining about it to the people that, due to their proximity, might also be most important to us? Is that how we spend our minutes of human connection?

I am happy with my life and trajectory. My toddler is rad and my wife is rad. Our swim team is doing awesome and is peopled with some of the most positive, hard-working young adults I have ever coached.

I’m motivated. Having direction and passion is a good way to bulletproof your psyche against things like worrying about rain in the forecast.

More important, I’m not tolerating the rain better because I’m distracted, I’m loving it more for what it is.

I have gotten more back to nature this past year. I started running again last summer and do this almost exclusively in Tryon Creek State Park. It’s good for the soul. No cars or traffic. Uneven earth beneath my feet, a running surface that nature designed all of us bipeds for. Root and soil instead of the pavement.

Two months ago I ran shirtless and gasping in stifling 95 degree heat. Pollen, nettles, and cedar bark spiced dry and dusty air. This week, I have taken two of the most rewarding short runs of the year in the rain and thickening muck as leaves break down beneath my feet and the trails become spongy with yellows and browns that spray up my ankles and spatter my Nikes.

The forest is more vibrant in the rain. Leaves and trees shine with water. Bridges glisten. Patter on a million surfaces provides a soundtrack and liveliness to the solitude of running alone on less-used trails. Yesterday I passed all of about five people. Most were bundled against the weather, hooded and wearing boots. I hoped they were having as much fun as I. They were out in the park under the same trees, soaking under the same raindrops and drips.

If you are waiting until the next sunny day and hoping the rain will stop, reality will check you when Oregon showers don’t dry up for a week at a time. You’re also missing life happening right on through the stormy winter.

A swim coach I know in the Bay preaches that his athletes should “Be above the weather.”

That’s a good start. I’d like to see more people be in the weather. Instead of making the best of a bad situation, just make the best of the situation. Make the best of our one opportunity to live each day.

Several years ago I coached a young woman from Reno named Susie. She loved hot days with sun on her face. She loved the rain. She wore colorful galoshes and took walks in the rain. She lived in the moment and was at peace regardless of whether the sunshine that day was UV or liquid. I admired her even as I was hunching down under my hood and hurrying across a wet campus between meetings.

I have tried to cut back on hunching. Have you noticed how clean the world smells during a rain shower? I try to feel each drop that hits my face, try to look out and up at the trees instead of the ground in front of my feet. That’s where the world is.

I don’t mind getting wet. But, I do mind staying wet once I’m inside. Wet socks, no good at all. I will still plan my footwear in the morning based on whether I’ll have to walk across campus in the rain or how wet I may get pacing the deck during swim practice. I will still come in out of the rain, hold onto the bottom of my rain jacket—yes, these are allowed—and jump up and down to shake the water off.

Being wet is okay. So is getting dry and staying warm.

Is this a diatribe about people who complain of the weather? Of course! More importantly, I am recording my own life journey through this temperate wonderland we call the Pacific Northwest. This season I am soaking up—literally and figuratively—some facets of Autumn I have, in years past, shunned like so many others.

I live here—Portland and the Northwest—for family, career, food, arts, friends, nature, and a thousand shades of green. This boils down to quality of life. It’s high here. Are we naïve enough to think this is in spite of the rain?

Or maybe we see ourselves as a hardy folk who revel both in clear days and in cloudy. Like Susie from Reno, we can love the liquid sunshine just as we love the bright orb at the heart of our solar system when she makes her appearances overhead.

The children’s song says “Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day.”

As fall drips into winter, I will try to keep on thinking rain, rain… go or stay. It’s your call.

I’ll still be here making the most of my days.