Sunset, and the photos I wanted to show off.

You know those people who hunt tornadoes? I’m gone a bit like them, except I’m a sunset-hunter. Having barely taken notice of sunsets before, I have the zeal of the convert now. I stop dead in the road if I see a good sunset, I sit on ditches and pull up chairs to admire the sky, I coax (annoy) people into coming out and looking at that sunset. Chicago had phenomenal sunsets, particularly over the lake, and I used to ramble down to take in the spectacle, despite having never heeded the same evening sun at home. That all changed with the lockdown; these days I’ve no end of time for sitting on ditches looking up at the sky.

On Friday evening, I was coming home from town and so taken with the evening sky was I, that I ran up the fields behind the house to savour the sight. I brought a camera with me. It’s pretty much why I’m writing this.  

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Recently I’ve spent plenty of time mulling over the sunset, for that is what one does in a cottage up a hill with a desk outside and work finished for the day. Writing about the sunset is hard because I simply don’t have the words. The camera comprehensively bests me here.

From where I sit, there are two parts to a sunset; the sky and the landscape.

The sky to the west is flaming orange; that’s where the pinks, magentas and the reds come from. As I look east, the bold colours – the stunning parts – soften and fuse into pastel colours. Fiery orange is now a gentle peach. It dims into lavender and pale indigo. They in turn drift into the last of daytime’s blue.

But that’s just the sky. There’s a great view from the front door, and whatever the trick of the topography, a particularly dramatic sunset illuminates everything to the south of me, turning almost every acre copper and bronze, orange, and even a little pink.

Up here, the sun’s rays steal through gaps between sheds, trees, walls and hills, and light up a gable, a particular field or the trunk of a tree. It’s Midas’ own touch; the gable, the field and the tree are radiant.

Even the plantation forestry I so detest is momentarily redeemed by the evening sun. What’s usually a dead zone of darkest dark green is at sunset bathed in rustic brown, pink and gold, copper and bronze.   

Last Friday evening, on the way out from town, I saw three skies. We came around the bend to a blazing sun turning the road west into a corridor of gold – a yellow brick road, one could say. We turned up for home, and the sky was peach-coloured in the west but fading blue the other way. When I got up the hill, the acres and acres between me and Granlahan was bronze and pink, desert-like if I squinted, like sunlight had been spilled over the whole landscape.

That evening’s sunset might have been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But I say that every time.

The evening before that, at the top of the hill at Falladeen, the lake was before me and the mountains in Sligo ahead of me, and between us all were bands of red and magenta flashed across a lavender sky. A few weeks ago, at the graveyard, the sky was orange as if on fire, and the high Celtic crosses and old trees were like silhouettes before it. More recently, I was lured to the lake by the slow sinking of the perfectly circular sun – a ball of fire – and its gold trail reflected across the water. There was a man in a boat, and the lake barely made a sound. I found myself holding my breath, lest I’d disturb a thing.

Deep enough in the bog, it’s low enough for there to be nothing at eye level but more bog. Too low to see houses, hills or villages, nothing separates bog from sky. Talk about an immersive experience; the sponge of the bog underfoot, the smell of the turf, the purple and mint green of the heather, and a sky battle between streaks and flashes of gold, orange and red.

It’s about three miles away; much cheaper than a ticket to Chicago.

Drive along the Atlantic or the Pacific at sunset and every viewing point is chock-a-block with tourists, camper-vans, tripods and zoom lenses and people posing in wistful contemplation (full disclosure, the poser is often me).

It’s the same sun setting over Seattle as over Sligo. We just don’t take much notice of it in the places we consider ours.

A spectacular sunset transforms the landscape for a few minutes, allowing us to look anew at every day’s view. ‘Ordinary’ is transformed – sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically – and we see the fields, hills and fences through a new lens. It reminds us that ‘here’ is beautiful – something often forgotten.

To stand in awe at sunset in Vietnam or Spain is to witness beauty as an outsider. Those places are not ‘my’ places, not where I am of. But witness a sunset from here, and it’s like being embraced by the place. In the grand scheme of sunset’s glow, we are as much part of the land as the oaks, the foxgloves, and the ferns.

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On Friday, after my view-savouring, I came back down and made tea, intending to commit to paper the ideas, thoughts and notions buzzing around in my head. Alas, when the tea was made, the sunset was done. The colours had gone, the dark was coming down, the whole show wrapped up as quickly as it had started. Everything normal again, night coming, the longest day of year edging closer.

I jotted down some notes and went about my evening, my soul warmed, looking forward to the next sunset.

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