There are days you stop and say to yourself, “I live here!”

Simply stop, dead still.

At the end of the day Sunday, a day mixing blue sky and clouds, an unusual day of wind, there was a grey time. The sun dropped below the ridge. The light was flat and half dark. Dusk-like in the late afternoon. About six the sun, long gone from the valley, lit the top of the Sisters and the strips of clouds over the ridges of the Lizard Range. The light changed from grey to a pale yellow. Ribbons of clouds paralleled the ridge above the ski hill. The South Sister’s flatiron face fully lit by the setting sun. The Middle Sister half hidden in shadow.

The clouds turned deeper yellow.

Off the ridges above the ski hill a scrim of blowing snow diffused the light as it sifted into the trees below.

The clouds turned orange. And moved to deep red before becoming grey again. Dark followed soon after.

I drove up to Ridgemont and sat above the park watching. I was listening to CBC and today couldn’t even tell you what they talked about. I sat and watched the clouds morph, brighten and finally darken. Watching, simply watching.

And when it was over, I again wondered at the beauty of the valley. How so often we drive to here and to there and forget mountains ring the valley. Like the walls and art in our house, they are there. Our familiars.

We shouldn’t. Every day we should look. Be grateful.

And we should measure our lives in how we came to live here. And we will be here tomorrow.