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Category: light

Golden Stroll

Golden Stroll

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Back from a long drive, I take to the road. Not as a motorist but a pedestrian. I’m not often walking during the “golden hour,” when the sun slants low and bathes the landscape in soft light, but I was yesterday, and I reveled in it.

I first learned of the golden hour traveling with photographers. While writers can ply their trade at any hour (observing, interviewing, soaking up the local color), photographers prefer mornings and evenings to snap their shots. I see why. The world looks better then, and so do the photographs.

I didn’t intend to stroll during the golden hour yesterday; that was just the time available. But once I was walking through it I realized my good fortune. Here was beauty to soothe the nerves and still the mind. 

(The golden hour in Khulna, Bangladesh.)

Post Solstice

Post Solstice

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The shortest day was mostly cloudy. I took two walks, my first in a while. It felt good to be striding through space, cold enough that I wore gloves in the beginning. 

We’ve made it past the nadir and are now on the ascendancy. There’s a direct line from today to June’s long, lingering twilights. A fact to keep in mind during the early sunsets of January and February. 

Yesterday afternoon, I heard a springlike twittering in the air. It was a flock of robins who breezed in to hunt for worms and berries. Another sign that spring is out there somewhere. 

Mood Lighting

Mood Lighting

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All day long they absorb the sun’s rays, so by the time night falls they’re ready to go. 

The new deck lights emit a spectral glow. Thanks to the cut-outs on their frame, the shadows they throw are squiggly and whimsical.

If you’re looking for complete illumination, they’re not the way to go. But if you’re after mood lighting, a way to be in the darkness but not completely surrounded by it, they’re just the ticket.

 

Springing Ahead?

Springing Ahead?

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Today is our first full day of astronomical spring, though the chilly morning temps make it feel more like winter. We in the mid-Atlantic have been spoiled this year, with snowdrops blooming in January and daffodils in February. It’s been a non-winter. 

Now that we have late light, too, I feel a bit like Punxsutawney Phil, dragged out of his burrow only to dip back in because the sun’s too bright. These late-light evenings, as much as they thrill, can seem like too much too soon. 

There’s a part of me that still craves the lamplit afternoon, the cozy cocooning feel you have in winter, a pot of soup bubbling on the stove, no outside chores calling my name to add to the inside chores that are always with me. 

In other words, winter gives me a pass of sorts. And now … that pass is over. 

Every Minute Counts

Every Minute Counts

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It’s a cold, rainy morning days away from the winter solstice. But last week I heard a radio announcer explain that, at least when it comes to sunsets, we’re already bouncing back. 

I just checked a daylight chart for Virginia … and it’s true. Starting last week we held steady with a 4:18 sunset, and last night, for the first time since midsummer, we added a minute to the evening end of the day. 

This tiny gain is still offset by the ever-later sunrises (7:51 this morning), but this time of year, every minute counts.

Wreathed in Fog

Wreathed in Fog

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A soft fog last night as I drove to a meeting. A fog that made the lighted trees and homes send halo-like rainbows into the gloom. 

Our house is finally among the decorated, with candles in the windows and lights along the roof and a big old wreath that I bought as a splurge because it smells so much nicer than the artificial one — and also because it was made by Bradley’s mother. 

That would be Bradley from Whitetop Mountain, Virginia, the same fellow we bought from last year. He apologized that the trees cost more this December and said he would “work with us” on the price. I bought the wreath to up the total. Bradley and his family could use it, I imagine. 

And now the wreath and the lights are shaking their fists at the darkness. In less than two weeks, the days start growing longer. 

Last-Minute Light

Last-Minute Light

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Yesterday was rainy and gray from start to almost finish. At 3 p.m. it was dark enough that I had to check the clock to be sure it wasn’t 5. 

But only minutes from sunset, the clouds blew away and left a window for the light. It slanted in clear and bright and contained, more like the illumination from a half-shaded window than one thrown off by our nearest star. 

I’ve seen this phenomenon before, this last-minute light. Some days it feels like a reprieve, other days a cheat. But it’s hard to complain when it leaves an afterglow like this.

Long-Day Season

Long-Day Season

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The headline caught my eye just in time to save the page of newsprint from becoming part of the fire-starting equipment last week at the late.  “Darkness creeping in as long-day season ends,” it said. 

Apparently Saturday, August 6 was the last day we’ll have 14 hours of sunlight until May 2023. It was the end of what the article called the “brightness quarter,” the 90 or so days of “solar beneficence and dazzle” we receive every May, June and July. 

It’s also the end of long twilights and drawn-out dawns, of slower living made possible by humid air and looser schedules. You might even say it’s the end of that feeling of limitlessness and possibility that summer brings. 

But that would be a gloomy thing to write on a spectacular late-summer morning, not in keeping with the bountiful daylight we still enjoy. 

Sunrise, Sunset

Sunrise, Sunset

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Time for another virtual vacation, this one to the banks of the Mekong River in Kampong Cham, Cambodia.

River of commerce and transportation, of fertility and growth. 

For me, though, it was a river of light — of sunrise and moon glow. 

The Prism

The Prism

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The prism is back, rescued from a dusty retreat on top of my dressing table, where it sat cupped and safe in an ornate candlestick since I moved it home at the start of the pandemic. 

That’s no place for a prism to be, I told myself, so I brought it into this room I’m making my own and hung it from the shade roller so it dances in the window. 

I’d almost forgotten about it when I walked into the room this morning, tea mug in hand. But there they were again, those welcome rainbows brightening my wall.