Sunrise & Sunset - One of my Favorite Subjects
But once I didn't have my camera...
What I love about Pennsylvania are the sunsets. I can sit for a half-hour just watching the light show develop around me. And it always takes my mind off everything else. Tonight's show was one of the best. I was driving home from the county park where I jog, when I passed a beautiful spot at just the right moment. It had been a while since I've enjoyed a sunset, so I pulled over to walk out into the field beyond the road.
The land sloped down before me to the west where a mown field of grass merged into a cornfield. About 200 yards beyond were several stands of trees. Mostly majestic oaks, maples, and poplars. An old farmhouse with smoke coming from its chimney lay in the distance to the southwest. As the smoke rose, it suddenly leveled off and drifted down through a hollow as if the spirits from years past were set free to play for the night.
The sky all around me was clear, except to the west where the clouds jealously crowded around the dying sun. They were stretched out from left to right in long, wispy, stationary lines with irregular swirls, as if eddies and flows from a river frozen in time. The sky, which was a deep blue above, blended in gradients to an iridescent aquamarine at the horizon.
At first the clouds were a deep yellow from the now absent sun, accentuating every ripple and curve. Then, in what seemed no more than an instant, they began to glow as embers in a dying campfire. Hot, yellowish-red stretched out to a cool, deep magenta at the very edges of the blaze. One by one, as the edge of night drew its line across the sky, the dying embers faded to cold, gray ash. I lingered until the final coals were all but out, leaving before they grew cold so to remember their glow as the deep of night enveloped me. I knew this was one fire that didn't need tending.
Thursday, August 20, 1998
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Somewhere in Pennsylvania