There it is, it's going, going, gone...

...Ma Nature puts on a 'rilly big shoe' when the Sun goes down...

It's like the period at the end of the sentence, or the last chapter of a good book. When I watch the Ocean Sunset at the end of a great day on the beach, I feel like I have basically taken my "day" as far as it can go. I feel an uncontrollable compulsion to 'be there', to watch the sun sink under the horizon. When you have mountains around you, your day is cut short by a little ways, but on the ocean, when the sun sets, it REALLY sets. That may sound crazy, but that's how I've come to feel over time, and there's a certain satisfaction in formally putting the day to 'bed' that I relish. Why?, I wonder. It's odd, I know. Could be that each day is a day forever gone, and I want to see it through until it ends, and yeah, that's part of it.

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Another part of it, I suppose, is that I used to be a real night-owl, but that seems to be changing as time goes on. The night-time hours sometimes become quite foreboding, in terms of loneliness or desolation, and it seems over time, that somehow nights have become "darker" than they used to be. Again, I know that sounds crazy, but I also rarely go out at night anymore, so that might have something to do with it. It could be an "age" thing as well; maybe as one grows older, their eyes don't adapt to the darkness as well as they once did. So, I'm out until that last little bit of sunshine is gone, and then I scurry back home to seek shelter, in the half-hour or so of relative light before the darkly mysterious shroud of night envelops me once again. (Excuse me while I pat myself on the back for that last metaphorical thing there...)

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But getting back to Ocean Sunsets (that's what this post is allegedly about, after all), each sunset has its own personality. I know that there are nice sunsets everywhere, regardless of if there's an ocean nearby or not. But for me, nothing equals the ocean sunset, as the commercial fishing boats scurry to the safety of the harbor before the sun goes down; as the mist begins rolling in from afar, adding an element of mystery to the end of the day as it seeks to blur the dividing line between darkening sky and the ocean horizon; as onlookers gather to watch the sun grow larger and redder and begins moving faster and faster towards the horizon, and all of a sudden, only 2/3's of it is visible, then half, then a quarter, and then the last little piece of the sun still visible "blips" out, leaving a shimmering sky in its wake, which grows darker as the sun retreats further, towards the Other Side Of The World.

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It would appear that this post is drowning in a vast ocean of endless descriptives and metaphor, and rather than let that happen, I'll share a few pictures of Ocean Sunsets with you. The photos below are approximations of Sunsets I've Seen Lately...someday I'll get a digital camera and do it right; until then, these pictures will have to suffice. Leading up to Thursday night's sunset, a big cloud bank had rolled in that afternoon...and I didn't think I'd be able to see the sun set, so I was planning to go home early...but it became obvious that the clouds didn't reach all the way to the horizon; there was a thin band of clear sky separating the Ocean from the Clouds, and the sunset looked something like this...

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At other times, the clouds are more scattered, with less of a dividing line between them and the Ocean, giving the sunset a totally different appearance; this next photo is more like the ones you'll see on postcards; views like this give the sunset a totally different appearance and it's like one of the sunsets I saw earlier this week...

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This next photo is that of a sunset not unlike the one I saw Wednesday night. It's amazing, the many different shadings Ma Nature can provide in an otherwise identical event. Honestly, it almost looks like the following photo was taken on the surface of Mars. But while it's been proven that there once was water on the Red Planet, there was probably never this much. Here, the sun sinks in the sky, with just a little band of clouds obscuring its midsection...

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Finally, this next photo is almost identical to the one I saw tonite...a spotless blue sky all of a sudden, taking on myriad shades of pink, orange and violet, and when the sun sinks this low, yes, it can be viewed with the naked eye. Either that, or I'll go blind in a few years. It has something to do with the Earth's atmosphere acting like a lens, and at the furthermost point, the atmosphere gives a concave effect that not only magnifies the Sun's size, but serves to concentrate the appearance of natural (or man-made) particulate matter in the sky, thus removing some of the Sun's 'shine'. Here, the sun is already beginning to sink below the horizon...

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Of course, there are other days where a band of clouds hanging over the horizon totally obscures the Sun, and as anyone who lives on the Coast knows, sometimes the clouds and fog are so thick that the sun can't be seen. Often, I've been on the beach, less than ten feet from the ocean and I could barely see the waves thru the fog, but you know, those days have an appeal of their own, with the sound of the tide rushing in, in spite of the fact that Mother Nature is hiding the ocean away in murky obscurity, as if there's something going on that She doesn't want you to know about. Most weeks I try to ration my sunset-watching activities, what with the price of gas where it's at, but I threw caution to the wind this week; on days such as what we've had lately, I just have to go and see what the Setting Sun is doing. So far, Mother Nature has never disappointed me.

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Due to my inability to find much subject matter to post about, all I could do was write about what's been happening in front of me. And after I posted this post, I thot, "haven't I written about sunsets recently?" Ohmygosh, yes, I did, on June 17th. I just went into more (excruciating) detail here.