Strolling in the Gloaming

We've been having hurricane affect weather in the District this weekend. This put a bit of a crimp in my plans to help my church's annual yard sale, but we forged ahead and did well enough in spite of some deity's decision to drench us in a downpour.

After spending both Saturday and Sunday in various stages of damp exhaustion, I finally made it home around 6 pm on Sunday. The sun was poking out between some rather impressively threatening clouds which were stalled in the precipitation negotiations, and I could see mist rising out of the trees near the river. I decided to take a brief jog to a favorite vista that is hidden by the crowding foliage along the bluffs above the Potomac River. I didn't mind the drops, the burrs, or the mud. As I reached the gap in the trees, I saw a lovely cascade of pastel colors, most of which I remain unable to identify. The clouds were a mix of dark grey and pink, the sky faded from blue to afternoon yellow. The tops of the clouds shined bright gold, and the mist oozed up from the river gorge enviously.

Tonight, I took a walk to clear my head and curl my hair in another foggy evening. I walked down to Canal Road, and the world might as well have ended at the river bank. Walking back up the bluff, the mist over the reservoir was banded. A dark lower layer brooded over the floating mats of gooseshit, and flocks of gooseshitting geese. There was an oddly light swath of fog above the dark that caught my interest. Perhaps it was an artifact of the streetlights and stoplights behind me but the fog seemed to have a dim inner glow from about twenty feet to thirty feet in the air. Alien exhaust fumes, or just some pedestrian reflection of the white-green glow of the streetlights. Above this, a few stars glinted through the thin clouds expressing absolute apathy to me, my job search, my love search, or John McCain's plans to ruin America.