Goggles…

An irony of snow is that it’s more difficult to see on a dim day than a bright day. You’d think the glare of the sun on the crystalline snow would be blinding, but it isn’t. What’s blinding is the flat light of a gray day. The other day out there with Bear, a gray day with falling snow and fog, I found it difficult to see where I was going — it wasn’t the fog; it was the light. After a while, my eyes adjusted to the absence of shadows and contrast.

I remembered having yellow ski goggles just for that because you could not see the lines on a flat, gray day. The yellow lenses brought the features back up into the world by allowing more light to reach your eyes making life a LOT safer. I dimly remember that in those ancient times we carried spare ski-goggle lenses with us and I even more dimly remember changing them and I remember people changing their lenses on the chairlift — not smart. You drop your goggles and then?

For me, the main job of goggles was making sure I didn’t lose my glasses. Sometime back then I got these GREAT glasses that had wires that wrapped around my ears. The glasses were pretty ugly, but really, priorities. They also had HUGE lenses. They were great, but times and fashion change…

RDP Monday: GLARE