Storm Sunset

A few days ago a small thunderstorm swept through the area to my West and put on quite a show. I enjoy non-destructive thunderstorms – have since I was a kid – and seeing them from a couple miles away allows for some fantastic viewing. Feeding off the late afternoon heat, the storm boiled into the sky and passed near enough to drive me indoors with rain. With sunset in full gear and the rain easing off, I walked to a small clearing near the house and watched as the storm tracked neatly to the South leaving a perfectly clear sky behind.

I should have taken my camera, but once the show got started I wasn’t about to leave. Nature offers few intermissions. As the sun slid over the horizon of trees and hills to the West and the thunderstorm edged away South, rays of light caught the upper portions of the stormclouds and painted them gold. The lower clouds faded from orange and red to maroon and gray with a beauty and sublety that fixed me in place. Occasional flickers of lightning brightened the main cloud column. Evening mist – steam – filled the rambling valley I overlooked and a crescent moon finished the masterpiece of land and sky in a bright sliver against the deepening blues of coming night. Only a madman would have left to fetch a camera.

It would have been beautiful on film, no doubt, a stunning photo of summer evening, but paper and pixels could never do it justice. There are some things that eyes need to see for themselves, that hands need to feel and lungs need breathe. How do you accurately describe the taste of a ripe peach? Words, visuals, images only go so far.

So I stood in rain-peppered awe following the storm’s southerly push and the sun’s splendid farewell until color had faded from the uppermost tip of the anvil cloud and the moon ruled the dark sky. It was so beautiful. At times like that I feel filled with child-like wonder, as if some part of the world were suddenly new again and I got to experience it first-hand.

I suppose in a way it was. Every day is new. Every living thing grows and changes. Non-living things are acted upon and altered. It is an ever-shifting world so, yes, I suppose every thing is always just a little bit new.

I find that unspeakably encouraging.

God’s Thumbnail

That’s what some call a crescent moon, the thumbnail of God. Kind of goes along with the idea that “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” Whatever your beliefs, it is a beautiful sight.

Last night I stayed up late, until 3 AM today actually. Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say. I hadn’t intended to, had made no plans to do so, but I got in a groove and rode it as far as I dared, which happened to be three hours into the next day. See, I love to write. You’d never know it, coming to this blog – my organizational skills sometimes leave much to be desired and I’ve been unexpectedly busy since last October – but I write in some form nearly every day.

Last night I got on a roll and didn’t want to stop. See, it’s been a long time since I felt like I really connected with the old muse and had more to jot down than just a line or two. It’s been years. It’s tantamount to a chocoholic being limited to one Hershey’s kiss every day for two and a half years, then suddenly one night finding a great stash with case upon case of kisses and all other manner of chocolatey goodness. When I found my word stash, I wasn’t about to close the door and walk away after just one treat.

Which is how we return to God’s thumbnail. About 2:00 AM or so, I noticed an orange glow in the trees to the East and dismissed it as a neighbor’s polelight. I kept writing. In the vicinity of 2:30 AM I realized it was a low crescent moon, tinted by the atmosphere and just beginning to rise. I watched it for a while, still half-obscured by treetops, and then went back to my words.

Beauty is such a simple thing. At 3:00 AM I left one thing of beauty for another, walking outside and standing in the yard under a hot, silent sky to stare at a sliver of dusty planetary satellite in its slowly fading orbit. And I was awed.

I can see why some call it the thumbnail of God.

Samantha Strolls

Saturdays mornings I open the store where I work.  This time of year it’s still dark when I pull into the lot, but the just-waning moon was so bright it looked like a spotlight, casting shadows through the apple tree next door.  I make the coffee, fill the shop with that comforting fresh-brewed aroma, and enjoy the quiet in the aisles that will soon disappear.  As the moon sinks across the road, falling into the evergreens, I reluctantly switch the lights on one at a time and gently wake the computers.  As the sky brightens, my favorite co-worker appears.  Samantha is always on time, always happy, a bit demanding at times but so loving I don’t mind.  And she has the cutest floppy ears.  She’s part black lab, part something else, and pushing 12 … which I think is near retirement age for her working class.  She gets a pat, a bone, and then we go for a walk, easily the most important and enjoyable part of the day.

The moon was gone by the time we stepped out, the sun not yet up, just us and a scatter of pale stars in that beautiful, quiet stretch between moonset and sunrise.  It was perfectly clear, cool, an unusually stiff breeze trembling the treetops and numbing my cheeks while Samantha rolled in the grassy field nearby.  I walked farther up the street, inhaling the sweet woody scent of the frost-whitened leaves, admiring their fragile, curled bodies at the pavement’s edge as I turned onto a sideroad at the far side of the field.  Samantha rejoined me and we strolled under the great, grisled pines holding to the street’s crumbling shoulder.  Topping a gentle rise the breeze caught us full and I could smell the harbor, salty and green and just out of sight.  We ran out of road and turned back, Samantha’s nails clicking evenly on the hottop as we swung down the slope, across the end of the field, back onto the main road still devoid of traffic. 

Dawn waited just through the trees but it was time to unlock the doors, hang the flags, turn the OPEN sign.  Samantha hopped up the steps into the store, settled into her khaki-and-cream dogbed, and I turned to peek through the buildings across the way to a sliver of the harbor and town beyond.  The highest house on the tallest hill caught first light in its windows, reflecting pinks and reds to the water below, lighting up small boats like Christmas ornaments.  I turned back to the store, climbed in, and grabbed the flags with a smile.  My favorite morning of the week.