January 2 - Winter Days

While today in Alberta there may be blue sky and sunshine, tomorrow might be drab and colourless. I enjoy the cheeriness of those bright days, but I find that the brightness is hard on my eyes. I wear sunglasses but still tend to squint to keep out the glare. On the other hand, I find the dullness of a grey sky quite depressing but easier on the eyes. The one consistent thing about winter days is that they are short and daylight hours are never long enough.

We have just come back from a long walk by the river and it was one of those grey sky days. I found myself thinking of Connie. I met Connie in Nova Scotia during the White Cane Connections Cross Canada walks. Connie is colour blind. I don’t mean that she can’t distinguish between red and green or blue and brown. I mean that she simply can’t see colur. It was perhaps what I saw today on my walk – white snow, dark trees and bushes and other objects that tended to blend into a dark mass of green or was it grey or perhaps brown or black. Connie has never known what colour is and I found myself wondering how to explain colour to a person who has never seen it.

What feelings, emotions or sensations are evoked by different colours?  I am reminded of a little game that I once used as an icebreaker at a meeting. I had passed around some Smarties. The idea was that people would look at the colour of the Smartie they had chosen and tell the group how the colour made them feel. We had gone from the bright happy yellow to the soft mellow of blue when we came to the person holding the red Smartie. To that point, I had thought of red as being angry, but the person holding the red Smartie was Chinese and explained that for her red evoked happiness. Another person in the group also held a red Smartie and told that for her, red was a powerful colour. When she wore her red jacket, she always felt in charge and in a position of authority. I’m not sure if there is an adequate way to explain colour to someone who has never seen colour.

The lack of colour in the drab days of winter also makes me nostalgic for the bright spring days that we left behind us in Australia just this past month. Spring in November is a burst of colour and I love it. Primary colours abound in most gardens. The two pictures with this post were taken within a block or so of where we stayed on our last visit there. The first is of a tree with an abundance of purple blossoms and I am standing in front. The second is of a bush of red leaves. It is great to have this blaze of colour before the dry days of an Australian summer. 

Sue in front of tree with purple blossoms

Bush with red leaves