Winter Skies

The poet Carl Sandburg wrote:

The fog comes on little cat feet

It sits looking over harbor and city

On silent haunches

And then moves on.

For weeks now mists of silent gray have hung over our valley. It is winter here and that means fog. Each morning lately I have opened the front door to pick up the newspaper and looked out into a sea of gray. Fog not only IS gray, it makes everything else look like it's been photographed in grayscale or captured as an old black and white movie. Houses are gray, streets are gray, trees and bushes are gray. All as if the edges were photoshopped with blurred edges.

Remember at the beginning of "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy starts out at her Kansas home in black and white film? In 1939 you expected to see a movie in black and white and shades of gray. But due to "modern" technology that year, when Dorothy enters the land of Oz, shazam...full glorious color.

Yesterday, in a "Shazam" moment, after an afternoon rainstorm, the clouds parted and a huge rainbow arched across the horizon. I wasn't in Oz but Clovis looked beautiful in full technicolor. It was as if this gift of a rainbow was reminding me that even on foggy days there is beauty. You just have to see it in the right light.

When Noah was shown a rainbow after so many days of rain, he and his family must have had a "Shazam" moment, too, as the clouds parted and the full light returned to the earth with the promise of brighter days.

The fog will leave our valley as the days lengthen with the approach of Spring. It was a lovely moment to see that rainbow yesterday, though. A reminder of the promise of days ahead of warmth and light.