Pursuing Helios
It was a lot of years ago in mid-summer on an evening flight to Denver.
We were lined up on the runway, ready to take off into a beautiful sunset.
As we gained altitude, flying west, the sunset grew in both scope and perspective until
it seemed that all there was in the world was that aircraft and the sunset sky.
That sunset lasted the entire flight and when we landed there was still the
afterglow in the sky.
The year that Mt. St.Helens erupted, untold tons of ash were ejected into the atmosphere
and for a year, West Coast sunsets were spectacular. I know that because I photographed most of them.
I was living in the Simi Valley in California. There was a range of mountains to the east and the coastal mountains to the west. In late summer, a spectacular thing would occur every late evening.
The sun would dip down below the western range and the eastern face of that range would fall into deep shadow while the sky above that range would be layered in in oranges, pinks, a touch of yellow and deep purples. the range to the east would be in descending degrees of shadow from light to deep. The bowl of the sky above this valley would shade from pinks and purples, to deepest midnight blue directly overhead with velvety black encroaching from the east. It was so much more than just beautiful. There was an actual moment, while color still rimmed the coastal range, that the brightest stars would begin to appear in the east. I would watch for that moment and then stand staring up as the darkness deepened and more stars appeared.
Though I have watched this hundreds of times, I've never known how long it took to go from sunset to night.
I just called it the Blue Hour.
The sun may indeed be just a carcinogenic ball of fire, but framed in the right setting it is a spectacular one. Nature has many aspects ranging from benign to unimaginably destructive. but whatever she is, she is also a poet.
We were lined up on the runway, ready to take off into a beautiful sunset.
As we gained altitude, flying west, the sunset grew in both scope and perspective until
it seemed that all there was in the world was that aircraft and the sunset sky.
That sunset lasted the entire flight and when we landed there was still the
afterglow in the sky.
The year that Mt. St.Helens erupted, untold tons of ash were ejected into the atmosphere
and for a year, West Coast sunsets were spectacular. I know that because I photographed most of them.
I was living in the Simi Valley in California. There was a range of mountains to the east and the coastal mountains to the west. In late summer, a spectacular thing would occur every late evening.
The sun would dip down below the western range and the eastern face of that range would fall into deep shadow while the sky above that range would be layered in in oranges, pinks, a touch of yellow and deep purples. the range to the east would be in descending degrees of shadow from light to deep. The bowl of the sky above this valley would shade from pinks and purples, to deepest midnight blue directly overhead with velvety black encroaching from the east. It was so much more than just beautiful. There was an actual moment, while color still rimmed the coastal range, that the brightest stars would begin to appear in the east. I would watch for that moment and then stand staring up as the darkness deepened and more stars appeared.
Though I have watched this hundreds of times, I've never known how long it took to go from sunset to night.
I just called it the Blue Hour.
The sun may indeed be just a carcinogenic ball of fire, but framed in the right setting it is a spectacular one. Nature has many aspects ranging from benign to unimaginably destructive. but whatever she is, she is also a poet.