Wet cold darkness

When I set out in the morning in the winter, it is wet and cold and dark. There are days were it is much wetter. Some days the darkness is from storm clouds, and it feels entirely different if the darkness is because of a dense fog. The wetter days seem to be, well wetter, but in a way that you feel wet and muggy all over. I personally think a truly "wet" day is when even with layers and all the appropriate winter attire, a small insignificant drop of rain or water finds the only exposed skin (usually around the neck or head). Why is this "wet"? Sure it seems arbitrary or insignificant, but there are days full of rain where I could walk from here to there and feel free and less constricted by he turgid humid air and can escape those torpedo like dew drops that can chill you to the bone. They are frustratingly wet really, and it is when the rain encroaches on my world that I notice, "Wow, it's wet today."
The coldness one experience's in Oregon, according to my Midwestern family, is the worst. I fear the hellish winters and snow storms of Montana and South Dakota, but when my family came in March for my wedding, the rain chilled them to the bone as if they were stranded in an arctic dessert. "I can never get warm, the coldness go straight to my bones and I just can't get warm again." I'm used to this of course, and it never really gets below freezing where I'm at. It makes me wonder. Maybe the foreigner is gripped with the ailment: feeling the cold. Maybe I'm immune to it like a disease and can no longer contract it. Maybe I'm immune to Oregon cold alone, and when I visit somewhere else the cold will be like a disease. It affects the body, so then why not? It grips the body, makes it hard to sleep, makes one lose their appetite, and has the nasty habit of making you very very grubby. It's like the "wet" rain. It is the kind that wakes you up and says, "Hey! I'm rain and you better darn well listen to me. I've been around, but I haven't been paid enough attention." The cold may do the same thing, but I don't know. Maybe it isn't as sloppy as rain. Maybe it is more persistent, the cold, a wearing down without movement. Like pressure, you can't see it, but you can feel it consistently all over your body equally. If you increased the pressure carefully and ever so slowly, it could happen without you really knowing it.
I stood under cover at a bus depot waiting for my bus. It was much later than I usually head home, and everyone else similarly sought out shelter. I had an undershirt, a knit sweater, a wool jacket, jeans, boots, and a scarf, and a little drip drop crept down my chest. The knit cap I wore was little protection and it served to just keep my head warm. I was both burning up warm and freezing, and the muggy air just made me want to strip down into my underwear and let the cool breeze chill my skin and wick away the muggy sweat. It is only 5:30 pm but it is easily darker than any night of the summer, and it is much darker than the dark I left home in that very morning. My mood had gone south for a period possibly because of this weird brand of winter, but something changed today. Even in the depression wet and dark cramped depot, I could not stop smiling.