Michigan Sunsets

Over nineteen thousand sunsets have come and gone since the day I was born. I’ve watched a good number of them, mostly in Michigan. You’d think that after fifty-two years I’d have had my fill, but there are a few simple things in life that I never tire of, and sunsets are one of them.

What is it about a sunset that captivates—that reaches through the eyes to touch the soul, stirring up longings and emotions as varied as the sky’s shifting colors? A sunset is a mysterious combination of present and past, of the silent beauty of the moment extending out of centuries gilded by the light of the fading sun. Kings walking the battlements of ancient castles…farmers bringing in the autumn harvest…campers and fishermen, hikers and sportsmen, farm women and business potentates…throughout the millennia, countless eyes, both jaded and innocent, have been swept up in the wonder of the painted sky.

Sunsets transfigure the countryside, revealing the hidden sublimity of everyday landscapes and causing us to stand transfixed by things that have been there all along.

This is the time of day when thunderclouds take on the look of mountain kingdoms, with rose and gold alpenglow set against the vast, shadowy valleys and gleaming white summits of Valhalla. It is the time when unseen dragons breathe fire trails into the troposphere; the time when poets lift their pens, crickets commence their fiddling, and fishermen reach for their topwater lures.

The recipe for a good sunset normally requires clouds of some kind in order to lend character to the sky. But not always. Last week I took an evening hike along the Deep Lake Trail in the Yankee Springs Recreational area of Barry County. I had hopes of photographing a nice sunset, but a high pressure system had scoured every last drop of moisture from the sky, leaving not so much as a single wisp of cloud. Sometimes, though, a person can find golden moments in simplicity. I think this was one such time.

As I write, the sky is full of towering cumulus and the radar shows isolated thunderstorms—the pop-up variety common to the Great Lakes region this time of year—blossoming to my north and west. I’m about to head off to Grand Haven to meet my mother and sister, and my brother, sister-in-law, and baby nephew, who are visiting from Dallas. Today is little Samuel’s first experience with Lake Michigan. I’m hoping he’ll get to see the kind of spectacular sunset that this afternoon’s cloudscape seems to promise. The poet in him is no doubt far too young to respond as yet, but Sam has many sunsets to watch before he hits nineteen-thousand. By then, chances are he’ll have a camera of his own to capture some of them—just as I hope to do with mine tonight.