I'm always bugged when someone asks me a 'Favorite' question. You know, like "what's your favorite bird?", "what's your favorite season?". Favorite tree, movie, person - whatever. I don't really see things that way. But when people ask me "what's your favorite color?" I reply without hesitation, " Gray".

Yes it's true, gray is my favorite color. I've enjoyed gray for so long I'm even turning gray! At least my hair is.

I realize that choosing gray is somewhat non committal in the favorites game, because gray can have a bit of everything in it. You have your light gray, dark gray, blue-gray, warm gray, cool gray, and so on. I find it interesting that mixing Complementary colors results in gray. Even the other colors like it! When painting a picture the first thing I do is make some gray. I don't use the stuff out of a tube, I prefer to mix my own. Red and green makes some interesting grays, as does mixing blue and orange, or blue and burnt umber.

Gray is an interesting color in a lot of ways. It plays well with others. Makes other colors look even better. I admire that. For instance, last spring I was walking out toward Spencer Island in Everett on a misty gray day. The low mist turned everything into gray, and a high gray overcast above had the sun way dimmed down. Real "oyster light" as some northwest artists have referred to it. And down in the swamp were a number of female Green-winged Teal were perched on several logs out in the gray. They all had their wings fanned down, whether to dry out, or functioning as solar collectors to gather a bit of the weak silvery sunlight, I don't know. But in all that grayness their wings patches glowed like green lanterns - gray is a great editor. On a sunny day, or with a green leafy back ground I probably wouldn't really have seen that amazing color.

Imagine camping in the mountains on a grayish day, when flock of Gray Jays comes down to your picnic table to steal your stuff. Beautiful and interesting birds of wonderful grays. But when a single Steller's comes down with them - Wow, what a color! Contrasting with all those grays makes the Steller's seem even bluer.

Gray can help one getting past seeing things in just 'black and white' terms. Last year I was watching the always interesting American Coots down on the River Road Ponds, just outside of Everett, when I saw two unusual birds perched on a floating log. What I soon realized was that they were fully-grown juvenile Coots which were of a beautiful solid gray color, with solid gray beaks. My first impression of them was that they were big fat Rails of some sort. The Great Gray Rail would be a good name. Anyway, gray helped me look past the usual Coot facade and see coots underlying affinities to Rails.

Around the maritime Northwest gray likes to perform magic tricks, such as the old 'now you see it, now you dont'. In the form of clouds, sometimes it gets a little carried away. Now you see some blue sky, now you don't. Gray covers up the fact that blue sky just left for Arizona while you're stuck here holding a big gray bag. But when blue does show up peeking around the clouds, aren't you especially pleased ? And gray is always hiding the mountains around here. When I worked at Paradise on Mt. Rainier for several summers we would get completely fogged in for up to a week or more. That was some major league gray. One of my jobs was picking up all the litter on the gigantic parking lot at Paradise every morning with a little triggered litter picker-upper. Looking at this vast area of cement in the fog for several hours was a lot of gray, that's for sure.

Then one morning gray would perform that great trick and pull back the curtain - Ta Da!- revealing the Mountain in all her brilliant white glory, beneath the bluest sky you thought you'd ever seen, skirted with meadows full of flowers of every color. Waking up to that was truly a mind-blowing experience. This is just one more thing that gray can do for a person.

Have a gray day! I know I am.

Jeff Gibson
Everett Wa























Gray can also help one get out of seeing things in just black or white terms. Take the American Coot for expample.