Aberdeen, Maryland, to New York City, February 7, 2016

★★★ Gray squirrels flowed over grayish ground under a gray sky. The children were playing at their video game in real life, gathering the many fallen sticks into their inventory. From the shed, they obtained a full-sized mattock and began mining at the soft ground with it, flipping over scraps of the moss carpet. A sneaker pressed into a surviving snowbank left light caramel-colored marks as the tread yielded its mud. Elsewhere in the old snow were crushed bits of berry the color of fresh gore — no matching berries were in sight — and dull blue clusters of berries fallen from the climbing vines, the insides of the latter a mere grapey green. Out of the trees and on the open highway, there was a limit to the gray, a gap in the southwest, streaked with dull oranges and blues. Miles passed and the colors intensified. Faint but immense pink forms coiled across the sky ahead. The light from behind grew more and more lurid till it was as red as the taillights in the side mirror. People were out on the city sidewalks in their parkas, cold but not (to the eye) miserable.