We’ve had a long stretch of slate grey skies and a bedraggled looking landscape.  I think I last saw the sun for all of ten minutes yesterday, just as it was getting ready to set.  Growing up in India and subject to the annual monsoon season, I am not unfamiliar with sunless skies for days on end.  So, the bleak mood that starts to permeate my being as a result of North Country grey skies has been somewhat of a puzzlement to me.

I was thinking about all of this during morning chores today, when it was quite clear that jolly old Mr. Sun would not be making any sort of appearance.  With the exception of a few barks from Bowie, and Roscoe’s intermittent crows to let the world know that day had come, the valley was utterly quiet.  It occurred to me that part of what makes endless grey days  so difficult to cope with, is the fact that winter in our valley is so quiet.

Grey monsoon days came with a soundtrack: pelting rain, the rumble of thunder, the crack of lightning,  water gushing down the drainpipes and through the streets.  Monsoons had sound, and that sound made up for a lack of sunshine – which sounds odd, but seems to have been my experience.   The monsoons of my childhood also had drama, sometimes it would rain so hard that I could not see beyond the tip of my nose.  And, Indian monsoons always had color – the hot pink slash of a turban, or turmeric gold of a sari was visible no matter how hard it rained.

I guess one way for me to get through these grey days is to call up those monsoon memories of old; reminisces of a long ago childhood in a faraway country, where color and drama were part of every season.