Observations on a Wednesday

When I came back I was most excited to see the mountains, but the train ride was gray and wet and everyone was stressed and in a hurry to get home before the workers went on strike at noon. It was crowded and I didn’t get a seat by a window, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyways. The fog was so thick you wouldn’t have known the mountains were there at all. I stared glumly out the window; it wasn’t the reunion I’d hoped for. I got home and moped around and slept and checked my phone and moped around and slept.

The gray settled all around for two days and I had that dread of oppressive loss sneak back into my stomach. There weren’t even any clouds; someone had painted it all the exact shade of boredom, if boredom was a color. I walked to the grocery store with nothing to look at. I walked back with nothing to look at. I’d left my phone at home. All was flat.

And then on Wednesday morning I walked outside to find the mountains suddenly there, like someone had passed by a toy village and sighed through the valley and over the mountains and blown all the gray away. I took two steps and stopped, mesmerized to see them shrouded in the softest pinks and lavender blues, with a fresh dusting of snow, glowing and sparkling in the light as the sun came up. And up above where the gray had been, you could see the ridge tops even sharper than before, like someone had taken a chisel and refined the outlines and swept the dust away.

I stopped to stare and almost missed the bus, but I wouldn’t have cared.