Last night, the forecast changed, predicting snow showers for this evening. Now, in the cold light of day, it’s changed again, and while the radar map shows something small headed this way, the alerts have been removed.
The peaks were granted a slight new dusting this morning, but already the heaviest clouds are clearing, and I think it’s unlikely that we shall see any precipitation here.
I’ll be more than happy to be proven wrong, of course.
But overhead, the skies are mostly clear blue. Bands of puffy gray and white scud rapidly past on all sides now, driven on a too-early trickster wind; only the faintest hint of iridescence shimmers from the edges of those in the southwest sky.
And the air, of course, is far too warm for the season.
That is, perhaps, the key to the skies. There have been times when these early weeks of the year are filed with the rainbow light of sun dogs, of the icy iridescent silver that veils the midwinter sun at its high point of the day. But those have typically occurred in ears when the cold is commensurate with the season, highs no greater than the lowest double digits and lows very often plunging far below zero.
It’s a phenomenon that also seems to occur when there is snow on the ground, although I suspect the only correlation that matters is the one that links a significant level of snowfall to the subsequent dangerously cold temperatures that keep it in place for a while. Actual rainbows, of course, tend to be much more the province of the warm months, when the monsoonal rains arrive, but climate collapse has altered those dynamics, too: Now, the rains are no sure thing in summer anymore, and the rainbows seem to come and go as they please, appearing once a few years ago on a February morning in the north/northeast, then a year and a half ago, on an early fall morning, one showing up out of season, time, and place in the early western sky.
Such manifestations are a gift of the storm, true, but even more are they the medicine of the light, and the light in this place is nothing if not magic. In winter, it’s the snowfire sunsets and lilac skies and the stray sun dog’s shimmer; in spring, the long reach of deep gold dancing with the dark blue shadows of twilight; summer is held in the mystical embrace of the rainbow and subsequent post-storm flames; and fall is all about the dawn, eastern skies ablaze in amber and coral and copper, while the golden glow of sunset gilds every surface before giving way to the green at the center of the midnight-to-gold gradient in the west. There is much to recommend this place, but for pure animating spirit, it’s the light that sets it apart.
And sometimes, the light makes its way indoors to work its magic. The subject of this week’s Monday Photo Meditation, above, is one of those odd little snapshots of an otherwise ordinary day, captured by Wings in digital format one morning in his studio. He had created the puffy, repoussé hearts already, intending to add them to works in progress, or at least envisioned, and they lay scattered across his workbench just to the side of the window above his anvil, facing east/southeast. Hanging from the window’s upper lintel is an ornament of faceted crystal, a heavy glass teardrop that catches every available ray of light and sends it shimmering onward.
On on this day, it caught them all at once, casting their rainbow spectrum onto the old wood of the workbench, scattering the colors across the silver hearts.
In a season allegedly devoted to notions of love, it seems like an expression of the light’s love for the world . . . and for our own love for the light.
Now, the sun has disappeared mostly behind the high, thin clouds to the southwest. It’s warm enough for rain today, should any precipitation actually manifest, but as I write, those formerly equally thin silver clouds to the west have begun to dull their shine as they stretch and reach, expanding, coalescing, collecting into a flat gray wall. Above their mass, a few strays still glow with the backlight sheen of the sun, but rain suddenly looks possible, if not exactly probable.
The wind is rising again, too, and if it persists, that might lower the temperature just enough to turn rain to snow after dark. That would be best; at the moment, the land is mud, a result of the remains of the last snow having melted entirely over the course of little more than a day. For now, the sun still shines, if only subtly; if the clouds persist, we may see neither moon nor stars tonight.
But the real gift is that they remain in residence always, warming, illuminating, their medicine delivered daly whether we can see it or not. After all, this is a place of love, of and for the light.
~ Aji
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