Living Sky

If you asked me what my favourite colour was, and I answered, "The colour of Saskatchewan skies." Would you think blue? I might. My first thought would be the ocean-deep, diamond-bright, dazzling azure of a mid-day mid-summer cloudless day. But I would also remember the thick dark almost-black blue of a moonless night, as well as the soft baby blue that midnight fades to as dawn takes over. As pink, red and orange streak one horizon, the other is dappled in an almost-touchable soft shade of blue.

And to think of the sunrise, one can hardly not think about the sunset. All the colours of the sunset. There's crimson red that paints itself across the sky in wide streaks, the orange that dashes boldly closest to the sun, the deep purple that replaces blue except for where red still paints the sky, the yellow that just swallows up the entire sky for all of five minutes, and of course the pink that soft clouds are dipped in; the shade of pink unicorns and little girls' rooms should be. The sunrises have a similar pallet, but the tones are subdued, and sleepy. Who can really expect them to be as bold as their evening counterparts so early in the morning?

But when you think the colours of Saskatchewan skies, do you think of grey? The heavy, pressing, all-encompassing grey that envelopes the entire province all winter? The heavy dense clouds press low to the ground, and fade into the snow covered fields until you can't distinguish the horizon, threatening to swallow you up if you let yourself go. The ocean of grey only relinquishes its grasp as spring starts to melt the world and brown creeps back in, and then slowly all the other colours of the skies come back to life at their appropriate times.

And there's that orange; when the clouds are low and heavy so the streetlights reflect off of them and light up the whole world with an eerie orange glow. As well as the orange of the huge harvest moon that hangs so close you could probably touch it if you reach hard enough.

And the forgotten colour; white. The wispy white of thin clouds spread across a pale blue, or the plump fluffy white of perfect clouds. And the white of a winter storm, where snow is blowing so hard and thick you can't see the neighbours, or distinguish the road from the air from the house.

So what is my favourite colour? As the season, the time of day, and the level of humidity change and pass, so do my favourites. I live, love and breath the living skies. I relish in them, let myself soak in their personalities, their vibrancy, their very life. Every one of these colours and shades is truly the colour I love just as it dances its way across the skies of my home and heart.