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ovenbird
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I didn’t know the depth of grey until I had spent two decades on the west coast where half the year is cloud shrouded and dim. I railed against it at first, holed up in my room with a full spectrum lightbulb shining in my face. But over time I’ve come to appreciate the nuance of these nearly sunless days. Sometimes the sky is flat, the clouds uniform and unrelenting. But often there are fascinating variations, like when the sun finds a chink in the armour of vapour and pours through into the basin of the afternoon; or when the sky borrows the blue grey plumage of a heron and extends its wings over the river; or when stormclouds gather over the mountains in the north and turn the day to night before its time, spreading like a bruise down into the valleys. When I step outside in the winter now my eyes can tease out the particular qualities of grey–indanthrone blue mixed with burnt sienna, yellow ochre mixed with alizarin crimson and prussin blue, ultramarine mixed with quinacridone gold and pyrrol red. There's a particular quality to the winter light, diffuse and ethereal, gentle and forgiving. It invites stillness, or so it feels to me now. It's taken time but I no longer equate grey with misery. Instead I find an opportunity to slow down and pick up the silvery threads of awe in a world unburdened by the weight of colour.
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