Skyscape Number 76

So. Driving home late this afternoon. The inside of my car is full of bright sunlight from the low-ish sun; in the middle distance, the still-wintry landscape of brown fields, bare trees, the odd streak of green or tan; in the far distance, a great curtain of grey-black cloud, with a scouring of paler grey in front - rain or snow falling - and a seam of paler sky showing between the base of the cloud and the horizon, with the precipitation smudging the bluish sky into grey.

Eventually, I nose the car in under the grey cloud, and the rain and sleet spatter the windscreen for a while, and then it stops, and I'm emerging into blue sky territory again, with a great swirl of dark cloud looping overhead.

Nearing home, I can see that the snow is scattered over the fields, and when the lowering sun breaks through at the top of Eydon Hill, I'm inspired enough by the scene to stop the car, jog back through the chilly air and take a few pictures.

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I was listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Between Here and Gone" album on the way home, and there was something refreshing and reinvigorating about the light and the cold air that lifted my mood, chiming with the sense of everyday mystery and reawakening possibilities (in the midst of the damnably confounding human condition) that's embodied in a lot of the tracks on this disc.

So that was my drive home. :-)