Neutral Colors

(This column was published on February 24, 1997.)

   White, black, gray and brown.

   White snow and ice, black tree trunks and open water, gray clouds and 
branches, brown grass and cattails. Not a dab of primary color brightens the 
dreary landscape. The just rising sun only subdues the deep gray of the cloud 
cover in the eastern sky.

   I am skiing the dike that splits the western marshes of the Iroquois 
National Wildlife Refuge. It is a cold, crisp morning and pinpoints of snow 
fall like sparks from tree limbs.

   Wildlife contribute no additional hues. A lone black starling flies off. A 
brown deer points its black nose at me, flicks its white tail and bounds away 
into the dark woods. Fox and turkey tracks are gray against the snow. Little 
white, gray and black chickadees and nuthatches search the tree trunks. A 
cotillion of arguing black crows passes overhead, their raucous caws cutting 
into the pleasant silence of the morning. A black vole peeks out at the base 
of a gray-stemmed dogwood, then quickly pulls back into its tunnel.

   My approach sends a pair of shy pileated woodpeckers into the air ahead of 
me, but from beneath and behind them their black and white bodies hide their 
red crests.

   Neutral colors -- I don't know who came up with that designation. They 
really represent absence of color. Except for the hints of brown the morning 
is like black and white television with its range of what computer 
manufacturers call gray scales.

   As I glide along, I think of anthropologist Oliver Sachs' latest collection 
of essays, "The Island of the Colorblind." In his book Sachs describes a 
hereditary form of colorblindness called achromatopsia that is 
disproportionately represented among the people of the tiny Pacific island of 
Pingelap. The more usual form of colorblindness impairs reception of only a 
few colors. My friend Roy Callahan, for example, cannot differentiate red and 
green, creating problems with traffic signals. But the Pingelap residents lack 
all color perception. They live in a world of those gray scales.

   A world that is just like this morning as I cross the marsh.

   However, even lacking color and with their leaves curled up or blown away, 
many wildflowers are still identifiable. Twisted chicory stems bear little 
knobs at each joint. Queen Anne's lace racemes are depleted but still intact. 
The prickly pods of wild cucumber swing delicately in the light breeze.

   Gray milkweed shells are cracked open and are bare of all but a few of 
their feathery seedlets. I stop to send a final one on its way drifting like 
another snowflake. Cattail heads are disintegrating into fluff for their own 
kind of seed dispersal.

   Tall yarrow spikes stand like widely separated sentinels, one of them 
overseeing a tangled group of teasels. I see only a few burdocks, but by the 
end of the morning my socks will be covered with them and a few beggars' ticks 
as well.

   Despite the absence of color, I enjoy the quiet morning. To me this day 
represents the zero, the starting point of the natural year. It will be just 
days before life -- and excitement -- will return with a vengeance. Early tree 
swallows will patrol the open water. The first robins will appear where snow 
has disappeared from lawns, not those drab overwintering birds but the big 
Labrador subspecies with its bright orange breast. Soon spring peepers and 
chorus frogs will add a sound track to this still marsh. Great skeins of geese 
and ducks will span the blue skies.

   And when those days arrive, our lives will be enriched once again by a full 
palette of color.