Aberdeen, Maryland, to New York City, March 6, 2016

★★★ Clear light came in around the shades, but not for long before clouds cut it off. The landscape was maximally colorless, dried and faded by the full length of winter. One yellow crocus poked out of the bank above the driveway, keeping its brightness to itself, while pale snowdrops filled the rest of the slope. A hawk, spotty and juvenile in its plumage, chased a chickadee fruitlessly around and around the holly that was the only green thing standing. The scenery by the Susquehanna lay under a miasma, some sort of gray fog or haze, as if the dullness were leaching out of the scenery into the air. The huge stainless steel Virgin Mary on the west bank of the Delaware had lost all its usual shine till it looked like coarse white-and-black marble. Just over the bridge, though, the sun suddenly came through. Clouds got smaller and sparser, against wider and wider expanse of blue. Deep warm tones wakened in the rust brown of highway overpasses and sign poles. The reflective strips on the rest stop sign threw back rainbows. Manhattan was attended by only tiny clouds, like blimps. Sun poured into the glass buildings on the West Side and glimmered down in among the ramps and underpasses, where the tunnel emptied into the city.