Blue skies inspire songs. Dark and stormy skies begin bed novels. What can be said of gray skies? Monotonous, dreary, enervating, but not actually awful, hardly noticed, simply endured by most as an interlude between sunshine and downpours.
We’ve been in a two-week pattern of gray skies around here. A week or so of cold fog and misty drizzle. Another week of brisk winds and glowing monochrome. For January, much better than ten degree temperatures or ten inches of new snow.
Other than praise for what they are not, do gray skies have any positive value? Well, of course they do, if I make the effort. I find them calming, for one thing. And with proper viewpoint, quite beautiful. Often they are layered in opalescent horizontal cloud blankets. Colors glow under their luminescence.
One or two gray days is no big deal, often refreshing after too much of any other meteorology. A time of rest. The problem for me is when they settle in for a long time. My psychology projects oppressiveness, or boredom, or whatever, anxiously waiting for them to end.
That’s wrong. It’s crucial to appreciate every moment for what it is in itself, not merely how it connects to past and future. Enjoy the beauty and calm. Even if those particular moments of gray might add up a bit too much.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 