We took our seats on a bench overlooking a wide emerald meadow beneath the sweep of a cerulean sky, where clouds moved in tones of white, gray, and sunlit silver.
Great bales of hay stood sentinel along the edges of the field, as if holding back the encroachment of the woods. The grass, cropped close yet supple enough to bend, rippled in soft reply to the satin breath of the morning breeze.
In the distance: a farmhouse, grain silos, a faint gesture of habitation.
Layered against mountains rising from the plain, the clouds drifted in curious forced perspective, turning the sky into an ever-shifting soundstage from an elemental Hollywood not yet imagined. Some tore across the horizon; others ambled, dragging their weight against the blue. To gaze into them was to see depth upon depth—born not of stillness but of collisions. One gray cloud slid before a silvery one, its edge rimmed with sunlight like a kicker spot on a model’s hair, separating their forms and accentuating the distance between these gentle giants. Behind them billowed clouds so brilliantly white they seemed to sear the eyes with their effulgence.
And then, as their matter shifted ever so subtly, a new cloudscape emerged, leaving us to wonder if what we remembered was real, a reverie of a future not yet arrived, or an act of pure imagination.
The nearest mountain displayed a color palette quite different from the clouds above. Deep hunter green flared into pine, then softened into moss, each hue a dialect of chlorophyll’s common language. Beneath them, browns traced their own gradients—bole, burnt umber, chestnut. The greens dazzled, but the browns knew it was their roots that gave the greens their song.
As the clouds glided overhead, their shadows swept across the land—down the mountains, then over the field in slow waves of languid darkness. The mountain dimmed, then leapt back into brilliance as each shadow passed. Across the grass, emerald shifted to olive and then to sage, as light and shadow danced, the field breathing in rhythm with the sky.
And then the wind arrived.
No longer just a breeze, it pressed itself into presence, a force insistent on being known. It ran its fingers through the grasses, bending blades into deeper greens with each terrestrial breath. The field quivered ecstatically—alive, in communion with the great drama unfurling before us.
We watched this living canvas painted by sun, cloud, and wind for hours, its strokes never repeating. Shadows swept the ground, then yielded to sudden leaps of light, the grass vibrating as if struck by a hidden chord, before sinking back into stillness as the wind receded and the shadows withdrew.
It was all so very beautiful. And so very different from city light and cityscapes.
In the city, you can watch the light too, but it dances differently there. Reflections ricochet off glass and steel; neon spills across the streets and avenues, weaving through the daily pageant of the teeming masses, all tumbling forward like dominoes into a decadent future.
So many currents to follow. So many signals to read.
Light becomes another thread in the joyful noise of the wondrous urban tapestry—restless, radiant, electric. I love the city light and its manic, beautiful madness. It is part of me.
But here, in Lake Placid, in this field, on this day, my eye belongs to the subtle rhythms of Adirondack change, to each quiet shift of sun, each deliberate turn of hue, to its summons to stillness and wonder.
This is the final, completed piece that combines various notes I’ve posted over the last few days.
…beautiful capture…you painted it so well…