The Sky Stayed Low · Gerald McClaw

The wind came home.

I say “home” because south is where the wind usually lives in September — south, or south-southeast, or some variation on the theme of coming-from-that-direction. Yesterday it had swung north-northwest and held there with conviction, and I had respected that, and noted it, and given it credit for commitment. Today it returned to one hundred and seventy-two degrees — almost due south — and it brought reinforcements. Fourteen and a half kilometres per hour, which is three times what it managed yesterday. Not violent. Not even particularly dramatic. But noticeable. The kind of wind that moves things: the washing on the line, the gate if you leave it unlatched, the hair across your face if you stand in the lane facing the wrong direction.

I stood in the lane facing the wrong direction, briefly, because I wanted to feel it arrive.

The feels-like was seven point one. Down from yesterday’s warmer correction, and the drop was not subtle. Seven point one degrees with a southerly wind at your back is a different proposition entirely from six point two with a whisper from the north. The cold was moving. It had momentum. It found the gaps in my cardigan and reported them honestly.

The clouds did not negotiate today.

There was no partly-cloudy diplomacy, no sun-and-shade conversation, no flickering between versions of the world. The sky woke up grey and stayed grey. Overcast, complete and committed, a solid lid from horizon to horizon that did not thin or break or offer a single glimpse of what was happening above it. I went out at dawn — six twenty-four, the same as yesterday — and the sunrise was not so much an event as a gradual change in the quality of greyness. Dark grey became lighter grey. That was it. That was the dawn.

I know this sounds like a complaint. It is not a complaint.

There is something restful about a sky that has made up its mind. The partly cloudy days are beautiful — I have said this, I have written it down, I believe it — but they are also uncertain. You dress for sun and carry a layer for cloud and you are always slightly wrong about something. An overcast day removes the question. The light will be even. The temperature will hold within a narrow band. You will not be surprised, and in the absence of surprise there is a particular kind of calm that I think gets undervalued because it is not photogenic.

The humidity sat at ninety-one percent. Three points lower than the last two days, which is a gap wide enough to notice and narrow enough to mean almost nothing. The air was still wet. Still heavy. Still arriving with that particular September quality of carrying more water than it should and not being entirely sorry about it. But ninety-one is not ninety-four. The difference is in the breathing. Ninety-four feels like the air is leaning on you. Ninety-one merely accompanies you. A companion instead of a weight.

It rained properly today.

Not Monday’s deluge. Not Wednesday’s apologetic one point six millimetres. Three point eight millimetres — a real, deliberate, sustained rain that began in the late morning and continued, with occasional pauses that were not pauses so much as the rain catching its breath, through most of the afternoon. I heard it on the round door while I was reading. Steady. Not loud, but continuous, the way a clock ticks — you stop noticing it until it stops, and then the silence is enormous.

Three point eight millimetres across an overcast day distributes differently than the same amount under broken cloud. There are no dry intervals. No moments when the sun breaks through and the ground begins to steam and you think perhaps the rain has finished being rain. It simply arrives and continues arriving, patient and workmanlike, soaking into the ground in a way that feels thorough rather than dramatic. The garden received it without fuss. The soil, which had been recovering its composure since Monday, went soft again — not the ankle-threatening mud of the deluge, but a yielding, cooperative wetness that would make tomorrow’s weeding either very easy or very messy, depending on whether it stops overnight.

I did not garden today. I considered it, briefly, around noon when the rain seemed to thin, and then the wind pushed a heavier band through and the consideration dissolved. Some days are not for gardening. Some days are for standing at the kitchen window with both hands wrapped around a mug, watching the rain do the watering for you and feeling, against all logic, that this is not laziness but wisdom.

The temperature reached fourteen point two at the high. Lower than yesterday’s fourteen point two — actually, no. Identical. Fourteen point two both days, which is the kind of coincidence that would mean nothing to anyone who does not write these things down and means a great deal to me. Two different days, two different skies — yesterday’s clouds-and-sun negotiation, today’s unbroken grey — and the same ceiling. As if the atmosphere has decided that fourteen point two is what September can afford and is not prepared to discuss it further.

The low was nine point two. A full degree warmer than yesterday’s floor, and here the overcast does its work. Clear sky lets the night drain heat from the ground like pulling a plug from a bath. Cloud cover holds it in. Nine point two is not warm, but it is warm enough that the dawn did not sting, and the flagstones under my feet at half six were cold without being hostile. A civil cold. A cold you could negotiate with over breakfast.

The UV came in at five point six. Higher than yesterday, which seems impossible under an overcast sky, but the sun does not care about clouds the way we think it does. Ultraviolet goes through grey. It does not need a gap or a break or an invitation. It simply passes through, diminished but present, and the fact that you cannot see the sun does not mean the sun cannot reach you. I find this reassuring in a way I cannot entirely explain. The light is there. It is always there. The clouds are not a wall. They are a curtain, and curtains let things through.

I spent the afternoon with a book and a pot of tea and the sound of the rain and did not feel guilty about any of it.

This is a development. There was a time — not long ago, measured in weeks — when a day spent indoors felt like a day wasted, like the Shire was doing things outside that I was missing, like the garden and the lane and the fields beyond the hedge were having an experience that required my attendance. I have learned, slowly and not entirely gracefully, that some days the Shire is having a private conversation with the rain and does not need me there to witness it. The rain will soak in. The worms will do their work. The lettuce will grow whether I am crouching beside it or sitting by the fire with Tolkien — yes, I read Tolkien, a Hobbit reading about Hobbits, and I will not apologise for it — and the fact of my absence from the garden is not an absence at all but a form of trust. The garden knows what it is doing. I am allowed to stay inside.

The wind held south all day. Fourteen and a half kilometres per hour, consistent, committed, pushing the rain sideways just enough that the north-facing side of the hill stayed drier than the south. I noticed this when I walked to the pantry window around three — the lane on the lee side was puddled and dark; the path on the sheltered side was merely damp. Wind and rain together produce these small geographies of wetness, and the Shire, being nothing but hills and hollows, is particularly good at sorting water into unexpected patterns.

Sunset at six oh four. One minute later than yesterday, another minute gained, and I did not see it. The overcast held through evening, and the transition from day to not-day was the same gradual dimming that it had been at dawn, only in reverse. The grey got darker. The kitchen light, which had been supplementary all afternoon, became necessary. The rain eased somewhere around half five, tapering to nothing with the same lack of ceremony with which it had begun, and by six the only sound was the wind and the dripping of gutters into the barrel by the back door.

Eleven hours and forty minutes of daylight. Three more minutes than yesterday. The equinox approaches, and even on a day when you cannot see the sun, the math continues. Light is being added. The account is growing. And the fact that today’s addition was delivered entirely behind cloud does not make it less real. The day was longer. The evening came later. The Shire is tilting toward the light whether the sky cooperates or not.

I closed the round door at quarter past eight. The wind was still south, still steady, still carrying the smell of wet grass and the particular earthy sweetness that rain brings out of the hills when it has been at them for hours. The fire was low. The book was face-down on the arm of the chair, open to a page I will find again tomorrow. The rain barrel was full, or near enough, and I could hear it — a faint, hollow, almost-musical note as the last drips fell in and found water instead of air.

It was a Friday, and the sky stayed low, and the rain came steadily and left without drama, and the wind returned to where it usually lives and seemed content to be there. I read a book and drank tea and did not go outside and the garden did not mind. Some days are for doing. Some days are for being warm while the world is wet. This was the second kind, and it was enough.