Who'll Stop the Rain?

Outside, the rain continues. Everything is wet and green, except the trees that are finally shedding their leaves in great clumps as the wind whips their branches in sweeping arcs. The year is ending much as it began, in a wave of "winter storms" that fill the gutters and make the driveway a muddy rut.
I have rain gear. I can go out and avoid becoming damp for minutes at a time. There are Goretex pants, jacket and gloves, and I have waterproofed my boots so that if I had the whim, I could go and stand in a puddle during a downpour just to show off. I don't want to.
Maybe it's because I'm old, but I just don't have the interest in challenging the elements like I used to. When I lived in Colorado, I would go out running in the wind and rain and snow. Not just a mile or two, but five and six mile treks through drifts that were up to my knees in some spots. I had a moustache then, and on several occasions the sub-zero temperatures caused a layer of ice to form on my upper lip. Ice would also form on my glasses as the moisture condensed on the inside of lenses. Lacking a defroster, I let the glasses slip down my nose and continued on in the blizzard peering over them.
I'm certain now that it is the extended period of wet weather that is causing this drain on my good cheer. I am missing the way that snow would pile up, while rain erodes. I feel a little silly sipping hot chocolate and gazing out the window as the mercury hovers right around room temperature. On those cold winter nights in Colorado, my father would gaze out on the snow-covered neighborhood and wax rhapsodic about how "everything looks so white and even." Outside my house the gutters are choked with leaves and a small lake has begun to form at the end of the driveway. Everything looks so wet and even.