It’s what I notice first every year, even before the foamy breakers, the spun-sugar sand. It’s the sky: vast and blue and dotted with clouds.
Here at the beach the sky stretches out boldly to the horizon, no curtain of green to obscure it.
Were I to live always beneath such a sky, I’d feel bare and exposed. But when I’m here, for this precious week, it opens me up, enlarges my vision.
Here at the beach, the sky rules.
Watching the light fade last night, I see leaves grow indistinct, dark masses without color.
Searching for bats, I see blurred forms cut through the darkness, visible only when they cross a patch of still-blue sky.
As sunlight vanishes, fireflies rouse themselves from the ground, blink and twinkle as they flutter their way to the treetops.
Closer to where I’m sitting, the deck lights snap to attention. They’ve been storing sunlight all day and now release it.
Two types of night light on an early July evening.
A late walk, not timed for sunset but finding it anyway. There at the end of the street, the end of the neighborhood, the end of the day.
Today at 4:51 p.m., the northern hemisphere of our planet officially enters its hottest season. It’s the earliest solstice in 228 years, they’re saying, since George Washington was president.
I’ve been thinking of George Washington lately, what with the discovery of 35 bottles of preserved cherries recently found at his home, Mount Vernon. Now I’ll think of him again, enjoying the longest day of the year, perhaps in Philadelphia, then the capital of these United States. A few months later, he will deliver his farewell address.
But back to the solstice, which is early this year because of leap year and our imperfect calendar. I could have waited one more day for it — savored the anticipation — but there’s no way to stop a celestial body when it has made up its mind.
And so I prepare to drain as much daylight and happiness from this day as I can. It’s the longest one; it can spare it.
(A favorite sunrise shot, the beach at Chincoteague, April 2016.)
It’s not cerulean or azure or aquamarine. To describe the sky I saw on yesterday’s walk, we need a new word. I propose bluuuue. Not blue, or even bluuue. This is bluuuue (four ‘u’s) at its purest and most intense. The hue of a cloudless sky.
I have a reason for describing this on Father’s Day. Dad was the king of blue skies. He didn’t seem to notice the clouds, or if he did, he chose to ignore them.
I took an evening walk last night, one week after the eclipse. Without thinking I headed west, toward the setting sun.
I think of our nearest star differently now, having seen it, well, naked is not exactly the word. Exposed isn’t either. Transformed? Chastened? I won’t use Emily Dickinson’s phrase “without its diadem” because a corona is a diadem if ever I saw one.
It’s more that the sun and I (and millions of other people) now have a special bond. We’ve been through something together. So when I watch it sink low in the sky and redden the horizon, I think of when the horizon reddened in every direction. I remember the cool air and the bird song and the glowing white ring.
It’s nice to be reminded of all that.
(Photo: NASA)
Back home now after two 12-hour drives that bookended a day of planetary splendor. First, I want to credit the supporting cast, the resplendent redbud trees that lined the highway and gave my weary eyes something to feast on, counteracting the white-line fever.
And the clouds themselves, which provided a light show late Sunday as crepuscular rays slanted down to the flat, black, Indiana fields, already plowed, waiting to be planted. The clouds that politely parted on Monday, letting the sun and moon steal the show. The clouds that returned Tuesday, making for a muted and pleasant drive east.
But it was Earth’s star and satellite that stole the show. Our own sun, in a form I’d never seen before. Not blotted out but transformed, covered enough to let its true splendor shine forth “like shining from shook foil.”
Since Monday afternoon I’ve been trying to put the feeling into words. It was awe-inspiring, yes. Once-in-a-lifetime, yes again. Most of all, it was comforting. It was light winning out in the end.
(Monday, April 8, 3:04 p.m.)
The temperature dropped. Birds sang their roosting songs. And then, the sun went away. All that was left was a ring of fire.
Our safety glasses came off, someone blasted “A Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and for almost four minutes we gaped in amazement at the darkened world, the weird twilight, our hilltop transformed.
I looked up and around, to the left and the right, marveled at the 360-degree “sunset.” I felt a shiver up my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. And then, it was over.
“This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt,” wrote Annie Dillard in an essay called “Total Eclipse,” “the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres, flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds.”
I looked at my photos, none of which captured the corona, and there, glimmering in the lower right-hand corner of one, was a single white dot. It was the planet Venus — in the middle of an Indiana afternoon.
It happened at 6:50 p.m. the night before last. A burst of light in the sky, a fireball or meteor, a visitor from space, vanished before those who glimpsed it even knew what they were seeing.
What was I doing at the time? Swapping out the old red plastic egg crate toy bins for new cloth ones? Or had I already come upstairs to fix dinner? One thing is certain: I was not outside looking up.
I’m thinking of Bruegel’s famous painting The Fall of Icarus, and Auden’s poem about it, how human suffering can be obscured by the ordinariness of life. The same can be said of wonder. How often we miss it. Our heads are down, focused on the page or the skillet, the task at hand.
Most of the videos sent to the American Meteor Society are from home security cameras. There’s no one around to see the meteorological marvel. But one of them shows a man taking out his garbage. You see the falling star with its long tail. You see him see it. He stops in his tracks, trash bag in hand. A witness to wonder.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
I haven’t seen him since March, but here he is again, and up to his usual tricks: early mornings, early evenings, a sense that darkness is winning. In a way, it’s not his fault. He arrives on the scene just as the light is fading, and departs when it’s coming into its own. He’s left holding the bag.
Some people want to banish him forever. Others think we should get rid of his flashy cousin. Until we do one or the other, Stan will be the sober fellow who says “you really should go home now, it’s getting dark” or “early to bed and early to rise.”
If you happen to catch him in the morning, though … it’s a different story. Trust me, I know.
(Two sunrise photos in a row? Stan made me do it.)
