February is Bake for Family Fun Month.

Hmm.

I love to bake, and I’m always on the lookout for a new recipe to try — homemade bread, a healthier cake, scrumptious cookies.

But gone are the days of my solitary puttering in the kitchen.

My daughter, Olivia, is 2 1/2, which means she’s quite aware of everything we do.

See if you can picture this: I grab a mixing bowl and set it on the counter. Immediately her eyes light up and she runs (she never walks) to the dining room.

Next I hear the scraping noise of our wooden chairs dragging across the floor — I cringe every time — and then silence as she hoists it in the air to carry it across the carpet.

Back in the kitchen, she pushes the chair to the counter, climbs up and rolls her sleeves to mimic my own preparations.

She cannot be deterred, so I pull out her apron and get out the measuring cups.

And prepare for a mess.

I can attest to the prevalence of wind on Steens Mountain.

My contact lenses, in particular, would gladly sign an affidavit.

Or an arrest warrant.

The lenses harbor a real grudge against the mountain.

And I don’t blame them.

I’ve never visited a place that combines wind gusts and desert dust with such gritty, lachrymose consistency.

Neither have my lenses, so far as I know.

I rarely go anywhere, anyway, that I can’t keep an eye on them.

So to speak.

This is a rare affliction in our valley, which is sheltered by not one by two rain shadows and as a result is a pretty sunny place.

The Cascade Mountains, the more imposing of these topographic barriers, siphon much of the moisture from the storms that ride the jet stream inland from the Pacific.

Then the Elkhorns wring out most of what’s left.

It’s quite common, then, for the Elkhorn peaks to be shrouded in cloud while sunshine brightens the valley below.

Which is nice if you enjoy skiing in the mountains but are less enthusiastic about shoveling your driveway.

These pleasant circumstances prevail, generally speaking, even during the depths of winter, a season renowned in less beneficent climates for conjuring skies of various slaty shades for weeks on end.

The typical winter sequence here, by contrast, begins with a day or less of storm followed by two or more days of clear.

Die, for instance.

Fortunately we’re dying in our cars far less often in Oregon than we used to.

Last year 381 people were killed in crashes in Oregon.

A terrible toll, to be sure.

But that’s also the fewest traffic deaths in the state in any year since 1949, when 356 motorists were killed.

This hopeful trend has continued into the first month of 2010, as well.

A dozen people died on Oregon roads in January.

That’s the fewest in any month since the state started keeping track in the 1930s, said Troy Costales, Safety Division administrator for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

The average for January is about 33.

January was also just the third month in which fewer than 20 people died in Oregon wrecks. The two others are February 2009, when 16 motorists were killed; and February 1999, when 18 died.