Shades of Pale

Gazing out my window this morning, I was dismayed to see the sun rise dimly over yet another dismal day filtered through mists of fog and hoar frost.

Not wishing to spend the day disheartened, I put my mind to work finding snippets of beauty in my pale, drab surroundings.

I often snap photos as Mother Nature whimsically changes my view from day to day. Tired of fog, I resolutely flipped through shots I’ve taken over the past three days, wondering if anything had actually changed.

I was surprised to see that even fog changes throughout the day, as well as one day to the next, even though it doesn’t seem so at the time. In the moment; it all just seems like nondescript shades of pale.

However, when I looked more closely …

Three days ago – the deep fog of early morning had no need of digital enhancement to be made into a true “black & white” image. The branches of nearby white birch trees stood out in dark relief against the white-shrouded background.

It was purely fog that first day. Temps were in the upper 30s and low 40s. Chilly and damp.

The following day dawned equally bleak and gray. In mid afternoon, the sun tried to make a break for it, but the pale blue sky only managed a weak appearance overhead, leaving the fog still clinging to the ghostly outlines of the forest around our home.

This morning, with temperatures having plummeted, the mist-laden trees had indeed taken on a new appearance. Although we hadn’t receivable any new snow, the trees had all been silently frosted overnight with thick, silvery-white hoar frost.

I found myself humming an old 60’s tune … seeing all around me “a whiter shade of pale”.

These pictures, capturing the pale wintery landscape, beautiful in its own way, caused me to wonder how many other photos I might have taken – and overlooked as drab or colorless – during my travels around Alaska.

I spent some time this morning shuffling through my photos from this past summer, happily recalling awe-inspiring rainy days, intriguing low tide mud-flats, mountains, inlets and bays enveloped in part or in full by rain squalls, thunderstorms and quiet fog.

I found a beach scene along Cook Inlet where I could see little beyond the nearby sea grass, and a surprisingly pale opal-green shaded glacial lake. I found a plain gray-brown tabby with the same pale glacial eyes.

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Shades of gray are too often ignored, thought of almost as a non-color … falling somewhere between black and white and barely worth mention.

But if you truly look at them, each shade is unique; the almost white, blue-grey, green-grey, grey-brown … all the quiet, peaceful, impossibly different pale shades of nature.

It seems only fitting that I finish today’s thoughts with a photo of the scarf I finished knitting last night … in shades of pale grey and charcoal.

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