What color is your life?

Thinking back over my life, I remember different places by color. My dreams of Davis, where I spent my 20's, are always green - lush carpets of grass and broad tree canopies to block out the hot summer sun. Santa Cruz - I'll remember in shades of blue and grey, for the ever changing ocean and sky. On a clear day, dark and light blue meet in an unbroken line on the horizon. On most other days, the sky and the sea rolled and churned in heavy waves of gray mist.

Northern Colorado is another creature. But the colors of my life here tend toward brown, red and gold, for the hogback hills, plains of golden grass, and brilliant sunrises. But these are punctuated by short periods of brilliant white. This has been a very dry winter - the warmest January on record in many parts of the country. But last night we had the first snowfall of the season that dropped more than an inch. I had forgotten how quickly the world can be transformed by a few inches of powder. It took no more than an hour to muffle the rumble of traffic and carpet the world in a fresh white sheet. The sky and earth glowed orange in the street lights reflected in the low clouds and falling flakes. Today the world is painfully white in the muted sunlight. It's as though someone has dropped a blank canvas, that now sits waiting for a splash of new color.