This afternoon’s sun shines full on Mount Juneau but not on me. Is this what the weatherman meant when he predicted party cloudy skies? I am not the only one in shade. The sun doesn’t reach a gull as it squats on one of our downtown light stands. It doesn’t shine on the raven that lands a few feet from the gull. When raven points its beak at gull, the shier bird flinches, then drops into a pre-flight crouch. Raven looks away. So does gull. Raven flies away. Gull stays.
Puzzled, I walk onto the steamship dock and find most of the day’s beauty trapped in water between the old seaplane hanger and a gravel barge. If Florence had been located in our rain forest, its renaissance church ceilings would have been painted to look like the channel’s sky reflection. Fine ocean waves distort the mirrored texture of sunlit clouds and obscure an unexpected patch of blue sky.