Colors

Going to milk tonight in the dusk, a very large very silvery moon had risen in a sky. I studied that sky for minutes to decide if I could tell just what color it was. I finally decided it was the purest navy blue. When I went out later to shut up the chickens the moon was higher, of course, and still oh so silvery, and the sky had turned to velvet black.

I once wrote to my artist friend Laura about how I could go through an entire box of crayons trying to describe the colors on the farm. Milking provides one an appreciation of the starkness of white (foam on the milk), the off-white of the milk, the cream of the cream (what are the odds?), the butter yellow of the butter in summer. The carpet of leaves newly fallen always reminds me of carpets from the late 60s and early 70s -- you know, sculpted, multi-colored, muted and the perfect example of what can go wrong with a good idea! I have seen every color in the sky, psychedelically melting one into the other and in the most shocking combinations. The mountains go through every possible shade of green in the spring, and the colors of the fall are always a surprise.

Even winter is amazing with its plethora of browns and greys and blacks on the bark and ground and little birds, and then suddenly there will be the shock of blue on a blue jay, red on a cardinal, or how the animals subtly change colors when they put on their thick coats.