The Clouds Come Home · Gerald McClaw

The sky came back today. Not the blue one — the other one. The real one. The grey ceiling that has been the Shire’s native state for most of this winter returned overnight with the quiet confidence of someone reclaiming their own chair after a guest has been sitting in it. Three days of clear blue, and now: overcast. Fully, thoroughly, unapologetically overcast, the kind of sky that has no seams and no opinions and no intention of changing its mind before dark.

I was surprised to find that I did not mind.

After three days of watching the stars and celebrating the frost and feeling mildly astonished by the blue, there is something restful about the grey coming home. It is like putting on an old coat. You do not love it because it is beautiful. You love it because it fits, and because it does not ask you to admire it. The clear sky demands attention. It says, look at me, I am extraordinary, are you paying sufficient notice? The overcast sky says nothing at all. It simply is. And today that quiet was exactly what I wanted.

The wind has vanished. One kilometre per hour from the south-southeast, which is not wind. That is air considering its options. Yesterday there were eight point eight kilometres of southerly hum, enough to make the chimney sing and the plum tree fidget, and today there is — nothing. Stillness. The smoke from the chimney goes straight up, perfectly vertical, a column of grey rising into grey, and stays there as though pinned. The branches do not move. The gate does not creak. Even the birds seem quieter, as though the absence of wind has created a kind of hush that extends beyond the air itself and into the general behaviour of things.

I stood outside after first breakfast and the silence had a texture to it. Not the charged silence that comes before a storm, nor the empty silence of a place where nothing lives, but the padded, muffled silence of a winter morning under cloud with no breeze. The sort of silence where you can hear your own breathing and the distant drip of something melting somewhere and absolutely nothing else. I stood there for longer than I intended, because the stillness felt like an invitation to stop moving, and I am a Hobbit who accepts most invitations.

Three point three degrees at the reading. Feels like one point five. This is warmer than the last three mornings — substantially warmer, in fact, because three mornings ago I was recording minus one and minus one point two and the sort of numbers that make the nose protest. Today the nose had no complaints. The frost was thin, half-hearted, more of a suggestion than a statement, and by mid-morning it had retreated without fanfare. The clouds act as a blanket, which is something I have read about but today understood bodily: the same clouds that hide the stars also trap the warmth, and what you lose in spectacle you gain in comfort.

High of thirteen point seven. I will say that again because the number startled me: thirteen point seven. That is nearly fourteen. That is the warmest high this week by a meaningful margin, and when I read it I felt a small unreasonable surge of something that I can only call hope, even though I know perfectly well that a warm overcast Thursday in late July does not constitute spring. It constitutes a warm overcast Thursday in late July. But the body does not deal in meteorological precision. The body feels thirteen degrees and thinks: perhaps. Perhaps soon. Perhaps the worst is behind us. The body is an optimist, and today I did not correct it.

The humidity is back up to ninety-seven percent, which means the air is holding everything it can without actually raining. And in fact it did rain — technically — point one of a millimetre, which is the kind of precipitation that exists only in the data and not on the ground. I did not feel it. I did not see it. It may have happened while I was indoors, or it may have happened in the way that very small numbers happen, which is to say: theoretically, invisibly, and without consequence.

Thursday. The day after the hinge. Yesterday I wrote about Wednesday being the middle, the stone in the peach, the day with low expectations and room to surprise. Thursday is something else. Thursday is the day after the middle, which means the week has tipped, and everything from here slides gently toward the weekend. There is a momentum to Thursday that Wednesday lacks. Wednesday sits. Thursday leans.

I leaned into it. The gutters are still not cleaned — I want that noted for the record, in case anyone was holding their breath — but I did spend a pleasant hour reorganising the shelf above the mantelpiece, which had accumulated the particular kind of disorder that happens when you put things down “for now” and then “for now” becomes “forever.” Three candle stubs, a ball of twine, a stone I picked up from the path in April because it had a good shape, two pencils, and a small tin that turned out to contain nothing. Not even dust. Just air, trapped since whenever I closed the lid, and now released back into the general atmosphere where it can resume its career of being unremarkable.

The stone I kept. It does have a good shape. Round, flat, the colour of wet slate, with a single white line running through it like a vein. I do not know what purpose it serves on a mantelpiece, but I know that removing it would feel wrong, the way removing a word from a sentence can sometimes make the sentence grammatically correct and emotionally worse. The stone stays. The candle stubs went into the fire. The twine went back into the drawer where twine belongs. The tin I kept also, because an empty tin is not a useless tin — it is a tin awaiting purpose, and I respect potential.

The fire. Six. Six for six.

I nearly did not mention the number, because I said yesterday that I was trying not to care about the streak more than the fire, and counting to six is exactly the behaviour of someone who cares about the streak. But then I thought: it is my diary, and I can count if I want to, and six is a number that deserves acknowledgement even if the acknowledgement comes with a small sheepish footnote about trying not to keep count.

The fire tonight is different from the last five. The last five burned under clear skies, with stars through the round window and frost thickening on the gate. Tonight the window shows nothing but dark cloud, and the warmth of the fire is not competing with the cold in the same way — the overcast holds the house warmer, so the fire’s job is easier, and the room reached its comfortable temperature sooner than it has all week. There is less drama in tonight’s fire. Less contrast. Less of the theatre of flame against frozen night. But there is a compensating cosiness, a sealed-in feeling, as though the clouds have wrapped the hill in felt and the fire is adding the last unnecessary but deeply appreciated layer.

I like this fire. It is a fire that does not need to prove anything. It is simply warm.

Sunrise at nineteen past seven. Sunset at twenty-seven past five. Ten hours and eight minutes of daylight, which is one minute more than yesterday and thirteen minutes more than a week ago. I did not see the sunrise — the clouds saw to that — and I will not see the sunset either. But the light today, though diffused, was generous. The overcast scatters it, softens it, removes the sharp shadows and the dramatic contrasts and replaces them with an even, gentle illumination that makes the garden look painted rather than photographed. I noticed colours I had not noticed all week. The green of the moss on the north wall. The rust of the gate hinge. The deep brown of the bare soil where I turned it last autumn. Under clear sky these things are washed out by the glare. Under cloud they come forward. They have their say.

UV at three point five five, which is a touch higher than yesterday despite the overcast, which I find counterintuitive and therefore interesting. The clouds diffuse but do not entirely block. There is light up there, above the grey, even if I cannot see its source. There is always light above the grey. That is worth remembering.

I want to say something about the return of the ordinary.

Three days of clear sky were extraordinary, and I wrote about them with the energy that extraordinary things deserve. But ordinary is where life happens. Ordinary is the overcast morning where nothing startles you and the wind forgets to blow and the frost is thin and the day passes without a single moment you would call remarkable, and you reach the end of it and discover that you are content. Not elated. Not inspired. Content. Which is a smaller word, and a deeper one, and harder to write about because it has no edges to grab hold of.

Today was content. The clouds came home. The silence settled. The stone stayed on the mantelpiece and the tin found its emptiness acknowledged and the fire burned without proving anything to anyone. I tidied a shelf. I stood in the stillness. I did not clean the gutters.

I think, on balance, that is a life. Not every day. But on the days when it is, it is enough.

— Gerald McClaw, six for six, shelf tidied, tin empty, stone staying, and the grey back where it belongs