I looked up at the sky and was hit by a profound realization. I was looking at a classic "leaden grey sky". I've read that description many times and it had become just cliché noise in my mind, to be skimmed over. But this was the real deal. Leaden grey. Which I suppose ultimately could mean grey grey. Or heavy grey. 

How do we talk about light here in the N.W.? When I lived in Santa Fe, N.M., I was exposed to a whole other way of talking about light than what I experienced here at home in the N.W. Everything seemed so very different in New Mexico. The earth was red and glittered with mica, the trees were small, I could see rain come from miles away. And everyone raved about the light. They painted it, wrote poems about it, sold photographs of it. They still do of course, but I am now back in the N.W. Wondering about what light we have here.

 How is our light and environment portrayed here? I'm looking through some websites of N.W. painters, I know that what I see on the web won't match the beauty of the actual paintings. But I can still find a sense of how the light is expressed in Emily Carr's work for instance, from B.C. I recognize those skies, I understand.

 Maybe it all comes back to water. Water washing through and altering so many colors and textures. In our skies, dripping from our dark green big trees, flowing and collecting. Much, much more than simply a leaden grey sky.