The glorious sunset was a daily marvel when I was growing up in Sunset, Utah.
Our home lay directly east of the Great Salt Lake, a mile or so away, and every evening, the setting sun would paint the sky a stunning array of reds, oranges, pinks and purples, the hues reflecting off salty water and wispy clouds. I can’t attest how much of this is selective childhood memory or meteorological fact, but I don’t think we ever had a cloudless sky or an overcast evening. It seemed that the Salt Desert to the west of the lake kept us from more than light rain, and that was during the day, but the lake itself gave off enough moisture to provide delicate brush strokes of clouds to spread the sun’s last rays across the sky.
The nightly show inspired my father to haul his easel and oil paints to the backyard. He had taken an art class a few years before, but didn’t get his inspiration to become a true artist until we reached Sunset. Some 32 years after his death, Mom and each of his children have sunset paintings – the sun, the lake, Antelope Island and a dazzling array of oil colors. Mine hangs in my office (actually, it’s in storage now, but I should have an office again shortly, and I will fondly hang it there).
As precious as Dad’s paintings are, nothing is as glorious as the real sunset. Each lasts just minutes, as unique as a snowflake, changing almost by the second as the sun descends behind the horizon. A three-foot canvas can’t match the awe of a real sunset filling the sky and the paints can’t change colors. Still, my painting from Dad was a fond reminder of the nightly show we enjoyed for five years.
Since we left Utah in 1965, few sunsets have approached the splendor of those, but I appreciate each one that spreads a little orange or pink across some clouds.
In November 2003, I was invited to a conference on Canada’s East Coast in Halifax. Mimi and I added a few more days to the trip, enjoying lighthouses, museums and chowder in villages along Nova Scotia’s shore. I wasn’t anticipating the sunset, since we’d be on the East Coast. But Nova Scotia actually runs mostly East and West, and we spent most of our time on its southern shore. That time of year that far north, the sun rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest. We heard of spectacular sunsets at Peggy’s Cove and decided to end a nice day there. It was indeed a lovely evening, and we enjoyed a scrumptious seafood dinner and climbed across the massive rocks to the lighthouse. But a bank of clouds on the southwest horizon hid the sun late in the day. We got a hint of pink as the sun slipped behind the clouds, but not a true sunset.
When a business trip in January 2004 sent me to the east coast of Vancouver Island, Mimi and I decided to drive across the island to the coastal village of Tofino. Mimi, an Iowa farm girl, embraces every opportunity to view the ocean, and this was her first chance to see the Pacific. I was glad to see the ocean, too, but I was especially looking forward to evening. Perhaps a Pacific sunset would be as magnificent as those sunsets over the Great Salt Lake.
I guess I should have figured that might not happen when I booked “storm season” rates at the Pacific Sands resort. Or maybe I should have grown pessimistic when the young man who shuttled us from the Victoria airport to the car-rental agency answered “since October” when we asked him how long it had been raining. But for some reason, as we drove through the mountains to Tofino, I was still expecting to watch the sun set. Pacific Sands provided yellow rain slickers to wear as we walked the beach. We had a wonderful visit, marveling at the powerful waves that crashed on the rocks and the beach and collecting huge pancake-sized sand dollars. But we never saw a hint of sun. When it wasn’t drizzling or storming, the sky was overcast.
In September 2006, another conference took me back to Utah. Except for a brief airport stop, I hadn’t visited since the 1960s. Mimi was going to fly out and meet me in Salt Lake City the last day of my conference. We would drive up to Sunset to see my boyhood home and we would spend the weekend in the mountains near Park City. I checked the paper that morning to see when the sun would set. I printed a Google map to guide me to the address seared into my brain from first-grade memorization: 993 North, 250 West, Sunset, Utah. We would arrive 10 to 15 minutes before sunset and watch the sun settle behind the great lake.
Of course, the home was smaller than I remembered, and 46 years old, instead of brand new. The saplings my father had planted were now huge shade trees. But I instantly recognized the red-brick ranch house and the carport, as well as Doxey Elementary School across the street. But something was missing. Where was the lake? At first I thought more homes must have been built between ours and the lake, obscuring the view a bit. But as Mimi and I kept driving west, we still saw no lake, just another town, street after street, lots of houses and no lake. Surely those mountains I saw were Antelope Island, but where in the world was the lake?
Mimi, who never loved our sunset painting the way I did, joked that it had been the ‘60s and wondered aloud if my whole family had been on hallucinogens. My parents were not children of the ‘60s and would not even joke about drug use, but I could hardly offer a defense with the lake nowhere to be seen and night falling. Eventually, we turned back mystified without finding the lake and returned to Salt Lake City for a fabulous dinner at a restaurant called the Metropolitan.
A business call the next day to an editor in Salt Lake City solved the mystery. When I mentioned my visit to Sunset, he remarked that the place must have really changed since my childhood. Yes! I exclaimed. What happened? He explained that the now not-so-Great Salt Lake was shrinking and in fact was seven miles farther from Sunset than it used to be, with two new towns filling the gap. There’s simply no reason to call that town Sunset any more.
Up in the mountains, Mimi and I enjoyed a lovely weekend. On an early-morning walk, I took in a gorgeous sunrise over the mountains.
My search for the sunset hasn’t always been in vain. That trip to Tofino was the first of six Mimi and I have made. We spent our 30th anniversary at Pacific Sands, in August 2004, enjoying better weather and climbing out onto a place called Sunset Point for a view of the sun setting on the Pacific that was worth the wait. We took a sunset cruise on Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho and watched the sun set over the Pacific in Monterey, Calif., and Lincoln City, Ore. And we were back in Tofino this week. This time we stayed at Duffin Cove Resort, with a balcony facing west. The sun drops to the horizon over the Pacific, just between two islands. The sky and water don’t turn as many colors as they did over the Great Salt Lake. But it’s still a special few minutes that I watch quietly, soaking it all in. Monday’s and Tuesday’s sunsets are pictured here.
For Wednesday’s sunset, we were out on the water, at the end of a six-hour tour. Orca whales surfaced in Clayoquot Sound, breaking the orange surface reflecting the descending sun.
Each time I try to capture the sunset with my camera, succeeding about as well as Dad did with his oil paints – a lovely picture but the sky always loses something in the flattening and shrinking. Wednesday I used my iPhone to capture the moment on video. Nice, but nothing like live. Now I have whales and the sky looking tiny, even on full-screen.
Let those vistas inspire your painting and photography, if you wish, but embrace and appreciate the moment. It won’t last long and nothing can truly capture it. The times you miss the sunset remind you how special a spectacular sunset truly is. And the good times I’ve had chasing the sunset remind me that you should savor the beauty of every day, even it wasn’t the day you were chasing.
I can’t count how many evenings I’ve spent chasing the sunset. It’s one of the few things (only?) I’ve enjoyed about being on the Gulf Coast again.
In Tuscaloosa, my photo excursions usually ended with the sun slipping behind scruffy trees while I pondered the legalities, ethics, and safety hazards of sawing down power lines.
Now a beautiful sunset waits for me every evening at Biloxi Beach. I spend a lot of time there.
BTW, if you haven’t played with any of the HDR apps for iPhone, they come in handy when shooting sunsets. It doesn’t make it an ethically “pure” image, but sometimes you’re just trying to capture the moment for yourself, not necessarily publication.
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