I don’t think it’s going to shock anyone if I suggest that we as north Americans tend to live indoors, and thus are protected from the elements. With the exception of the hundred metres I dash from my car to the mall or from the mall to my car the weather affects my life about as much as the results of the African Nations Cup of Football [bbc]. Working in Oakridge has heightened my feeling of climatal ennui since there’s barely any windows and while I could see outside into the bus loop at Metrotown here in Oakridge my only glimpse of nature is a mall kiosk selling Chinese orchids.

Certainly major weather events affect our lives still, I evacuated during the Okanagan fires a few summers ago, but the little things like record consecutive days of rainfall only really touch us if we’re living on the side of a mountain. Even when I was Skytraining to Metrotown and walking half an hour to Burrard station between my iPod and my rain coat I felt pretty isolated from the elements.

Maybe I’m just feeling this disconect because of Vancouver’s total lack of weather aside from rain or non-rain. Snow you have to deal with, you have to shovel it and you have to climb through it. Rain shovels itself, and while I’m not able to walk freely down the street in my silk smoking jacket and silk smoking pants, I feel like rain doesn’t really hold the threat that perhaps it once did when we lived in stone castles and mud huts.