Dark, Dust, and Doves

Dark, like dust, accumulates in the corners of my imagination. For half the year up here, I have to contend first and foremost with the winds (See my previous post re chicanes in the latest battle against King Wind.) For the other half, darkness, absence of light, the other side of the coin, however you choose to call it, is the chief nemesis. And King Wind plays second fiddle.

 

After a sweltering week in Philadelphia where sweaty rebels turned parliamentatians had hammered out a compromise constitution for the fledgling nation, Benjamin Franklin assured a doubting collegaue that the motif on the back of a chair was definitely a sunrise rather than sunset.  So, Yes, the photo above is a sunrise. That is the good news. The not so good news: this is taken out my back door at a little past 9am. Way too late for my midwestern brain to take on board. And these too long dark days over the years (a dozen now on the edge of the Pentland Firth) have accumulated like dust in the places where things should be clear. 

So I am back to piling words on top of each other in the hopes of clearing the dust-dark and making sense of who/why I'm here.  And on cue, here's a dove. (No, my city friends, definitely not a pigeon). Benjamin Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be the symbol for the new nation rather than the eagle. The wild turkey, like Franklin, was a very canny bird and knew when to take cover. Doves are often used as symbols of peace and the end of travail. I'll take this bird as that kind of a metaphor, but just out of frame is the bird table where he was enjoying a late breakfast (birds don't like the dark much either). And I suspect he was just wating impatiently for me to go back inside so he could go back to breakfast.