Today’s commute to work looked quite wintry.

The sky was flat gray and hanging just above the power lines from the look and feel. The roads I drive in on are wide and gray under my wheels. Four and six lanes of divided concrete ribbons once I hit the expressway. The earlier portion is 10 miles of seven full lanes with full shoulders on both sides undivided gray concrete. It must be over 100 feet wide of unbroken concrete and it runs from Galveston Bay all the way to the west of Houston before becoming a more civilized stretch of roadway…

It was on  the expressway that it all hit home. As I passed the summit of one of the man-made hilltops the highway department provides for the amusement of us flatlanders, I saw a flock of gray colored pigeons take flight. Twenty or thirty gray birds swirling into the gray sky above the gray river of concrete. The image had an impact as I glanced into the rearview mirror to see them settle again on the gray shoulder of the road…