Heavy Skies and Soft Days

I’d been in the shop all day until Perkins pawed at me and gave me that insistent look with that little ear-spread and head tilt.

“Do you want to go out, Perkins?”

With that, she entered her full-body dance mode, head skewed for a twirly move, nails clicking on the floor, and that little nub wagging her whole behind. So, on went the leash and out the door we swept onto the sidewalk and toward the grassy alley between the gallery and the restaurant next door.

As she sniffed the ground and pulled at the leash, I raised my eyes toward the street rolling down the hill toward the water. It’s lined on both sides with stone retention walls and huge historic oaks, their leaves lightly fluttering. I felt the breeze and found the temperature had dropped noticeably since morning. This time of year, the mid-afternoon quality of light is so amazing with the fresh spring green leaves, the roses, azaleas, honeysuckle, and white spirea. Oh, the roses all over town this year are spectacular!

As my eyes perused the colors, I noticed movement above, and my focus was drawn to the clouds pushing across the bright azure sky. Such a contrast they were! They were not ambling or wisping across the sky; they were marching in heavily clad units, brilliant white on the tops and looming grays beneath.

I call this a “heavy sky,” heavy with change, almost preternatural. When you see that sky above, look for the whitecaps on the river, which will have turned from blue to a greenish gray, and know that any sailboats out there are having a Whooo-Hooooo sailing day with waves licking the gunwales and plenty of skirt showing!

I love that sky! A desire to be out on the water overtook me. But, I had to return to the inner walls of the gallery once Perkins completed her sniffing and tinkling.

The changing skies here next to the water are nearly always innervating. They can be squintingly bright, flooded with red and gold, pure cyan, steel gray, or we can have what Cloyde used to call a “soft day.”

Any photographer understands that a soft day has soft gray skies that generate almost no shadows, no harsh contrasts, just soft, indirect light everywhere. And if it means a gentle rain, even better! A soft morning is one where you wake up, possibly a little late, and linger over an extra morning coffee or tea with a book in your lap, fighting the urgency to dress for work. It’s a day of colors undampened by blinding reflections or devouring shadows. But it could also be a day of muted colors as they are distantly enveloped in the mist.

Some people might label me as “time blind,” but I think that is an inaccurate tag. In truth, I’m often willfully late, usually more so than I planned, but hardly apologetic, anyway. I know it’s not good for business, but I also know that I am 73 years old, an age when I should never miss an opportunity to “smell the roses.” I know that no one will starve if my shop does not open promptly at 10 AM while I appreciate the extraordinary beauty of simple, yet extravagant things, like the sky, like the Great Blue Heron skimming across my creek, or like the prism effect of the morning sun on a dewy rose.

I might end up penniless because I don’t want to miss God’s perfect beauty that is all around me. Even in that case, however, I will have lived a richer life than many.