Sunsets – Yeah, Another Blogger

Three Sunsets In A Row: A Cape Cod Story

October 15, 2019Yeah, Another Blogger133 Comments

As I begin to compose this opus on October 9, my wife Sandy and I are into day six of our annual Cape Cod pilgrimage. More likely than not we’ll have returned to our suburban- Philadelphia abode before I complete the piece. That’s because I’m on The Cape (a 65-mile-long peninsula in Massachusetts, USA) to indulge in fun and games and to immerse myself in natural beauty. Ergo, writing sessions are nowhere near the front burner.

We love Cape Cod, as I’ve noted in a bunch of essays since launching this publication four and a half years ago, and so far the trip has been absolutely A-OK. We’ve filled many of our waking hours with activities that bring us pleasure and joy. To name a few: walking along Atlantic Ocean and Cape Cod Bay coastlines; moseying around sweet villages; flying our trusty kite; chowing down each night in good, dependable restaurants; grooving hard to rock and blues bands; playing a round of miniature golf; going on a whale watch voyage in the Atlantic Ocean. Holy shit, I’m a fortunate f*cker, aren’t I? And I’d unhesitatingly call Sandy a fortunate f*cker too, except that she’d be very displeased with my language if I did.

Probably I’ll focus a bit more on some of the above pursuits in a future story or two. But the rest of this piece will be about a different subject, one that warms the hearts of much of humanity. Yes, somewhere in the vicinity of 80,000,000 articles already have been written about sunsets, but that won’t stop me. I’m a follower, not an innovator, so I ain’t too proud to squeeze yet another sunset story into the mega-humungous pile!

Is there anything about this sunset story to set it apart? Don’t bet your life on it. But it does have something going for it. You see, before this trip Sandy and I never witnessed more than two consecutive sunsets. But we improved on that by catching sunsets on the 5th, 6th and 7th of October, a personal record that we may never top. This wasn’t by grand design. Instead, things just casually fell into place. Not otherwise engaged on each of those nights at around 6:00 PM, we wisely chose to watch our friend the Sun make its way to the horizon, and we stuck around for a while longer because, as everyone knows, sunsets frequently become better after the Sun has disappeared. Then we headed off to dinner, feeling better ourselves.

The sunsets that we caught had different personalities from one another. The first, a gauzy cloth of yellow and orange in a cloudless sky, was the brightest, even though the colors didn’t cascade all over the heavens. The colors would have done so, I thought, if a nice amount of clouds, with their reflective and refractive powers, had been present.

But what do I really know about clouds? There were plenty of them, airy and tufted, the next night. The sunset remained muted nonetheless, with simple bands of orange and yellow that didn’t radiate into other regions of the skies. Clouds! I think they thumbed their noses at me that night just for spite.

And the third sunset was the least colorful of all. In fact, only hints of yellow were visible through a very dense cloud cover. But that was all right with me. It was a different form of sunset, a subdued one in greys, yet beautiful. And a lonely kite surfer was a good addition to the scene.

The sunsets took place over Cape Cod Bay, which abuts Cape Cod’s northern side. For sunset number one we took our positions at Rock Harbor, in Orleans. For the second we stood on the sands of Corn Hill Beach, in Truro. And for the third we gazed from Mayo Beach, in Wellfleet. I tell you, each of those locations is magnificent. The unfussy layout of all the pieces (sky, waters, sands, grasses) is as fine as you ever could wish to see. Hell, sunsets are the icing on an already-astonishing cake.

So, here’s the thing. At home in my suburban/urban region, there are not a lot of expanses where you can engage with nature properly. Overdevelopment has seen to that. And sunsets? Well, good luck viewing them over the houses and office buildings and other structures. That’s why, when at home, sunsets are rarely anything I think about. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?

But on Cape Cod? Man, when I first came here, in 1998, my nature-loving component swelled in size and slapped me awake. While on the Cape I make it a point to walk on sands or in forests or marshlands every day, weather permitting. And though Sandy and I don’t seek out sunsets compulsively — too much of a good thing would dampen the glory — we never want to end a Cape vacation without having scratched “watch one or more sunsets” off our to-do list. Sunsets are there for the taking, after all, beautiful performances for which the tickets are free.

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The Deck And I (A Sunset Story)

October 18, 2016Yeah, Another Blogger18 Comments

When my wife Sandy and I were house-hunting 11 years ago, looking to make the daunting leap from a Philadelphia row house to a slightly bigger spread in the burbs, our real estate agent took us to towns all over the place. Sandy and I examined a lot of homes. We wanted something middle-aged and attractive. And being a lazy guy who wasn’t up to taking on anything remotely resembling a major project, whatever dwelling I ended up in also needed to meet the definitions of renovated, clean and comfortable.

After a few months of searching we came upon the house we now call our own. And one of the big reasons we said “yes” to it was a feature I’d hardly ever in my life thought about, let alone thought I’d want. But when I took my first look at the house’s deck that sat eight feet above and overlooked the backyard I said to myself: “Holy sh*t, this is da bomb! I want it!” And since then I’ve had it.

But, dumbass that I am, I haven’t put the deck to extensive use. I’ve spent plenty of hours upon it, for sure, but erratically. This year hardly at all. When I want to laze I tend to do that indoors on the living room sofa where I practice spilling beer and dropping Cheez-It crumbs by the hundreds all over the cushions. I’ve gotten real good at those sports. I’ll note, though, that Sandy loves the deck. She’s thinking of moving onto it permanently, leaving her spouse to his own devices.

About 7 PM one evening last month, however, the deck called to me. I was on my way into the kitchen from the dining room. And, through the dining room’s glass door that leads to the deck, noticed the sky. It was fabulous, streaked with pinks, oranges and yellows. Our friend the Sun had dropped below the horizon minutes earlier. A grand sunset was on!

Me, I’m a sunset guy, though you wouldn’t know it when I’m occupying space in my manically overdeveloped suburban region. Here, it’s kind of hard appreciating sunsets displayed above a landscape crammed with strip malls and gas stations and office buildings. So, here I’m not in the habit of seeking out sunsets. But I get into them in a major way when in beautiful open areas. Sandy and I are fans of Cape Cod, for instance. At many Cape locales the vistas are something else: endless waters, sands and, sometimes, marshes. When I’m surrounded with ooh la la scenery like that I get jazzed watching the Sun drop and the sky drip with colors. And it’s not just me. Lots of people are into sunset-gazing on Cape Cod. No matter which beach area Sandy and I have stood on to take in the event, a bunch of other folk usually are there too with the same thing in mind. Sunset-gazing on Cape Cod, and no doubt in many spots all over the world, is almost a tribal ceremony, a quiet one that comes together seemingly spontaneously out of primal needs.

Cape Cod aside, I should but almost never remember to look at sunsets from my deck, the perspectives from which aren’t disturbed by strip malls et al. Sure, that perch isn’t the perfect one to take in the sky, what with the trees out back obscuring views profoundly. But, hell, it’s still awfully nice. What’s more, things seem pretty peaceful on the deck, since there are no cars going by. Peaceful, that is, till one of the multitude of nearby canines starts barking its fu*king head off. But I digress.

Yes, the sky was fabulous. I grabbed my iPhone, turned on its camera and went out onto the deck. To the south only half of the sky was visible, due to several big boy trees. Within the tree branches, though, bits and pieces of sunset hues played a cloak and dagger game, which I thought was awfully cool. And above the trees? Man, the painting was great, with swaths of pastel tones floating in darkening blue.

To the west was a somewhat different type of story. A few trees condensed the just-above-the-horizon view to a fairly narrow opening, but the gap was enough. Gorgeous colors drenched that section, the yellows falling lower and glowing brighter by the second. What can I say? I got drawn in. I dug it all, to the west and to the south. And I snapped pictures, as if the 500 billion sunset photos already taken by humankind since the invention of photography weren’t enough. Yup, there’s something about sunset pix. I’m not embarrassed to toss a few more into cyberspace.

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A Cape Cod Sunset Story

October 23, 2015December 9, 2015Yeah, Another Blogger4 Comments

My wife Sandy and I have a love affair going with Cape Cod, which is where we are vacationing as I type this missive. We live in suburban Philadelphia, but in most ways prefer the Cape. Boo hoo . . . we’ll be back home tomorrow.

In 1998 we visited the Cape for the first time, expecting it to be a locale we’d enjoy. Well, we did. And decided to come back the next year for some more good times. I think it was on that second trip that I realized I liked Cape Cod much more than I ever thought I would, that it really suited my soul, that I was starting to become smitten. Sandy and I have returned every year since then, excepting one. Before Cape Cod entered the picture, in my adult life it had never occurred to me that there might be an Eden of sorts waiting for me, someplace beautiful and in which I truly felt at home. A favorite place.

Sandy and I have had only great vacations on Cape Cod. We’ve been there in all seasons except summer, which is the one time of year when the Cape is overrun. With humans. We fill our days with a variety of activities: nature walks on sand or through forests; poking around in country-imbued villages; art gallery and museum hopping; attending movies, plays and concerts; lots of tasty eating in restaurants humble and above; the list continues. No doubt, this is the good life. I feel almost guilty that such fine fortune has come my way. But I’ll take it.

Atlantic Ocean shoreline. Eastham, Cape Cod.

If I had to select one reason above all that puts Cape Cod at the top of my list, I’d point to the expansive areas of natural beauty. Such as the 40 or more mile-long Atlantic Ocean shoreline, much of it government-protected and thus little disturbed or altered by the hands of man. The vistas there are pretty elemental and always knock my socks off. Ocean, sky and beaches backed by dunes-topped sand cliffs. My psychological and emotional makeups, whatever the heck they might be, vibrate in a calm, contented and awestruck manner when I’m in the midst of such.

And there are other reasons. To name one: When vacationing on Cape Cod sometimes an unexpected present drops into your lap, just as with life in general. One day last week an example came my and Sandy’s way. I’m talking about a sunset. Right, right, I know that over the centuries untold thousands of scribes have oohed and aahed in print about sunsets. And millions of sunset photos have been published, more in the last 15 or so years than ever before thanks to the Web. But hey, I’m not embarrassed to add a few hundred sunset words, and a handful of photographs, to the Everest-high piles already out there. Don’t bail out on me. Keep reading.

And so on the aforementioned day at 5:15 PM, Sandy and I were in Chatham, a needless-to-say charming Cape Cod town. We had just watched Steven Spielberg’s latest oeuvre, Bridge Of Spies, in the Chatham Orpheum Theater. Our next planned destination was 20 miles away, Harvest Gallery Wine Bar. There we meant to dine and listen to a tough as nails rock trio, The Catbirds. But there was no need to arrive before 7 PM. We had time to kill. We scratched our heads, coming up empty. Then “sunset” popped into my mind. Sandy checked with her phone, which is much smarter than me, and learned that the Sun would dip below the horizon at 5:57. I steered our car westward and then turned south onto a road I’d never heard of, hoping that we eventually would find our way to a Chatham beach on Nantucket Sound. The sand gods must have been with us, for Hardings Beach Road soon materialized. And moments later Hardings Beach itself emerged.

We parked. The spot was gorgeous. Lovely sands, magnificent Nantucket Sound waters gently rippling beneath a sky puffy here and there with clouds. The clouds made my heart leap, or something like that, because a scattering of clouds, as I’ve come to realize from years of sunset-gazing on the Cape, is key to a good sunset. Their water droplets and other particles refract light beams and reflect colors. Their movements and changing forms turn sunsets into active canvases. And that’s what happened as Sandy and I watched our fiery faraway friend say goodnight.

Sunset with the Moon at Hardings Beach. 6:07 PM. — Sunset. The Moon. Hardings Beach. 6:07 PM.

A lot of people claim to dislike colorful abstract art, certain paintings by, say, Vasily Kandinsky or Jackson Pollock. I don’t get that, because everybody loves sunsets, which to me can be among the ultimate in eye-popping abstractions. I’ve never read that sunsets inspired any brush wielders to go wild and free in their approach or vision, but it wouldn’t surprise me if in fact this were the case. Sandy and I watched the sky for 20 minutes. The pinks and oranges darkened as the big event rolled on. The clouds worked their wonders. And in a little while Sandy pointed up and said, “There’s the Moon.” It was a graceful sliver of white balancing above swashes of pastel hues.

On Cape Cod I’ve been a lucky son of a gun many times. That evening on Hardings Beach was one of them.

(Photos by Sandra Cherrey Scheinin. If you click on any photo, a larger image will open)

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