Perhaps it will change as winter approaches, but the light in the coast of Oman is harsh and blinding, although it sometimes makes the sea a breathtakingly gorgeous blue-green colour at midday, if you can bear the pain. The sky is rarely truly blue, but an odd brownish-grey-white; no clouds, or perhaps all cloud. Colours are strangled and dulled, even through the darkest sunglasses. Photography has to wait until near sunset or, as today, for the desert dawn.

As I look north my view captures the sparkling blue of the river, the solid dark grey and terracotta of Union Station and the Broadway Bridge, and the lighter greys of various concrete buildings and the I-405 bridge balancing Mt. St. Helens on the horizon. Over the west shoulder of the mountain is another peak, and to the east of it I can see yet another snowcap (Rainier?). There are trees of mostly green but speckled with red and orange as the leaves are just beginning to turn here, and the darker harsher green of the evergreens.

I love Portland.