Growing up in the high desert, I learned a lot about the cycles of the day. Especially the cycles of a good and hot day.
Living at over a mile in elevation, you can expect some really spectacularly hot days. One hundred degrees plus. Burn your leg on a hot seatbelt, sweat out your body weight, run through the sprinklers kind of heat. But you are rewarded at the end of the day by the cool that comes with sundown.
Living in the desert, you can expect some really spectacularly windy days. The kind that knock you down, dump over your trashcan and send it a mile away, tip patio furniture and blows the shingles off the roof. But you are rewarded at the end of the day by the calm that comes with sundown.
And you are rewarded, at the end of the day, by the fantastic pink melon and deep blue and yellow and purple and red colors that come with sundown in a dusty climate.
Where I come from, sunset is a show. It's cooling and it's calming and it's a fine time to pour a glass of sun tea over ice and sit in a lawn chair and slap at mosquitoes and smile and remember just how great the summertime really is.
Today was a pretty hot day in the Bay Area. Not New Mexico hot, only in the low 90's. But add a dash of humidity and it was a bit of a broiler.
There was an kerfuffle at a factory near where I work, so we were instructed not to go into work. Today I got to sit in my little rental home and watch the cycle of this day.
The morning was nice, clear, warm, but pleasant. Birds chattered at each other as they stole figs from our tree.
Noontime brought the heat. And the birds and animals sought cover. The Feline laid flat on the floor, making sure no limb touched any other limb.
By 3:00, it was oppressive.
By the time The Good Man got home from work, it was really pretty disgusting. A haze hung in the air with a lingering shimmering heat.
But...now it's just past seven, and the sun is setting. The day is cooling.
That nasty haze is converting the sky from gacky gray to a pinkish blue.
Sundown hasn't let me down yet.
(Unless you live in Phoenix. That place never cools off.)
Image removed at the request of the photographer, Glenn Hohnstreiter. You can view it on his webpage. Go take a look. You'll be glad you did.
