h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A fiery orange sun hanging low on the horizon. I’ve got maybe ten minutes till it’s gone so after spending the whole day inside with a particularly unhappy stomach I have come outside to watch the sunset. As I write it’s slowly going behind a tree and every time I look up it’s a bit closer to the hills. I move over into my neighbor’s yard where I can see the whole fire circle again for a while. Actually the fire is gone now – it’s just a pleasant orange color. I hear the birds chirping. A low hoo, hoo, hoo – and it’s gone to pink, as has the sky around it. On my current schedule the sun rises as I eat breakfast & falls as I avoid homework so I get to see both. Now it’s just touched the horizon & is slowly turning gray. I think of the view I get every day - a bright sun setting into a low, wooded eastern hill. It’s half gone now, as I think of trees – with all the logging of four hundred years – just a sliver – the entire Philadelphia region is still wooded. The sun is gone. I have a forest for a backyard. Yesterday, I watched the sunset in the “Olde City” neighborhood of Society Hill, on Spruce Street. (That’s right Spruce – to go with its parallel east-west thoroughfares Vine, Cherry, Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Pine, and so on.) Across the street from me was a largish Chestnut. Now it’s nothing to the trees in my backyard – but it made me really happy, that tree. I love the sun setting into my wooded hill. I sit staring at the pale pink sky, listening to the birds converse, smelling the springtime, and hearing the air move in the valley. Ahh.

Now it’s a warm nighttime. I sit on my fence, looking up at the moon in the moist air in which I feel enveloped. Comfortably so. It’s like I’m being hugged. The moon herself is four or five days old, but bright. In the cloudy sky, though, I see little else. Except the trees, dark green against dark blue, and my painfully brightly illuminated house. I shouldn’t complain – in the nearer suburbs half the sky is orange, And it’s a rare night when you can see a star. But fresh off the a weekend at my camp, where the skies are clear as anything, I’m spoiled with starlight. Looking up again, I see the Big Dipper almost directly overhead. My friend Jeff, who understands things, has just come back from a yearlong program on a kibbutz in Israel called “Workshop.” While at camp, he pointed out to me the “Workshop Star.” I think of my next year of life, also on a kibbutz. And my earliest memories of times spent in Israel, visiting relatives. Driving back to the Apartment, nights, looking up at the sky, black as they come. I look at my sky, here - a dark blue, as I mentioned earlier. In Israel, I will have my night skies.

But what of my sunsets?

Hi, Ioreth...
I dropped by to say hi, and got completely caught up in your journal. Thank you for such beautiful imagery. I could feel and smell that air as I read.

Thought I'd share a few of my own sunsets with you.
http://www.arts.ilstu.edu/~guither/gallery/general/G010.html
http://www.arts.ilstu.edu/~guither/gallery/general/G005.html
http://www.arts.ilstu.edu/~guither/gallery/general/G001.html
http://www.arts.ilstu.edu/~guither/gallery/australia/A013.html

Redbeard

Wow.