Working in the winery, I've been getting up very early. The samples I collect and test are used to determine the day's work, so I've been starting at 5 am to have numbers ready for the winemaker by the time he gets in around 7. It makes for interesting sleep cycles.

It also opens up a realm of aesthetic experiences that are generally denied to late sleepers. Today, I saw a yellow planet among the fuzzy stars on my way to work, and got to revel in the morning light on my drive home around 9:30 am. The quality of the light was so arresting, I was writing to a friend about it, and thought I'd record it here as well:

As I drove home this morning, the day was offering to become sunny, with low fog still hanging around in tatters, and some very high, white cloud in a blue sky above. Everything was suffused with this Blessed light. Many people would let it go as "indescribable," but I have a special interest in describing light.

This morning's light was both crisp and creamy at the same time; if it ere ice cream, it might be a perfect lemon gelato. There was almost, but not quite, a color to it: a touch of leftover gold from the rising angle of the sun, yet also the purple-grey of cloud-shadow; a lot of white from the clearness of the day, gentled by the thin, high white clouds and dissipating fog.

In our autumn, a few of the trees are beginning to turn color, and others are always reddish -- but the ordinary green ones looked extraordinary this morning, too. I had some difficulty keeping my eyes on the road, and stopped a couple of times to gaze.

What is it, I asked myself, what is it about this light that's so different from noonday glare or evening gold, or any kind of ordinary, uninterrupted sunshine? What is it about diffuse, white light that's so soft and lovely and compelling? The hills look very matte and ordinary in it; it's the trees that stretch the eye with their loveliness.
It reminds me of my aunt Jane's watercolors, and I asked her about it once -- but I didn't have the words to describe the light I was after. We didn't get far with the discussion. Her painting style is cool and crisp enough, that she may not be overly troubled by the differences in light.

I sat on the sidewalk at home and watched closely as the light began to break up: clouds moved, some trees were exposed by harsh light while others remained soft. Eventually I managed to articulate two differences:

One: contrast. As a photographer knows, it is possible to "fill in" shadows by adding some extra light to a strongly-lit scene. The clouds' diffusion does this also; it lessens the difference between the highlights and low-lights. Shadows for once look neutral, or compliment the colors in front of them; on trees in full sunlight, the shadows seem black by contrast; there is at once too much and not enough detail. So lower contrast produces a more complete visual. I can see all of the tree at the same time, without adjusting my eyes.
Two: white glare. Full sunlight tends to produce a lot of glare; glossy leaves will shine with white highlights. This emphasizes the details of each leaf, but washes out the color of the tree as a whole. So in diffuse cloud-shadowed light, things look "softer;" the "hardness" of that glossy glare is absent. This increases the amount of detail one can see in the tree as a whole, because individual leaves and needles are not screaming for separate attention, or distracting the eye with extra white light.

The richness of the colors is striking, in spite of the dimmed light, because it comes from three places at once: full-color, glare-free surfaces; full-color, glowing backlit leaves; and full-color, slightly misty shadows.

The trees that look eye-poppingly gorgeous in this light are those with some internal contrast: poplars, cottonwoods, and olives, with their silvery under-leaves; bronze maples with their contrasting deep and bright reds, rusts, hints of green and yellow and even blue. These leaf-by-leaf contrasts are usually lost amid glare and shadow.
The oaks and firs look good in this light, too; you can see color in both bark and greenery at once, and the details are soft and crisp. Hawthorne didn't look half-bad, either, with its red berries and little green paws. And there was still dew on the grass, catching sparkles as well.

Altogether, a morning well worth watching.
I use words to render the light into memory, something I can share with you at a great distance, and re-live at a later time. Of course it is not the same as seeing it yourself, but hopefully it evokes your own memories.

There is a certain similarity to winemaking; wine reflects the nature of the hill, its living leaves and grapes, but a glass of Pinot Noir is a very different experience to a morning on Cooper Mountain.