Sun settings

I used to think that the only real sunsets were those you’d see from a shoreline, or perched on a vacation home deck overlooking the wavy expanse.

There was something about water – and the sun being gobbled up by it – that made them cool.

This probably started by watching all those old movies where the guy gets the girl and they swoon on an island paradise.

That doesn’t mean I’ve discarded the pleasure of scrunching sand between my toes walking on a beach at the end of a day, imagining the hiss the sun makes as it sinks into the ocean below the horizon.

But now spending so much time inland, sunsets take on a different look.

Yesterday in late afternoon as I frequently do, I ensconced myself outside in my sturdy cedar chair and thought of nothing.

I just watched life all around.

My favorite cheap scotch and soda in hand out of the grass comes my lumbering turtle. Where he leaves from is always a mystery. He just appears.

I watch as he slow-motors along the wire fence line: he is looking for an opening to go next door. It’s boring on this side. Not much going on.

Two of the neighbor’s young cows stop and see him too. Cows are curious. I grab my camera and record their introduction.

Undeterred, the turtle continues his gentle march along the fence line stopping every once in a while thinking he can squeeze through the mesh. He can’t, but doesn’t know that.

Feeling bad that his industriousness won’t be rewarded I contemplate two options: lift him up and place him on the other side, or snip the lowest rung of wire giving him an out.

I discard both of those alternatives and take no action. Man has already intervened in his life by putting up the fence in the first place. There are other animals over there – goats, hens and chickens -that he would have to deal with too. Better to let nature otherwise take its course.

He is a long-time resident, I’ll see him again.

Just off to the west I am wowed by the unique beauty of a waterless sunset. The camera clicks the proof.

As if scripted, a life-long best friend calls from Nantucket where he is visiting. It is his birthday. Happy Seventy-Fifth I rag him. [It isn’t, but it’s creepy thinking about it.]

Extolling the virtues of my sunset – with the animal show to boot – I insist it is better than his. And it is in the great state of TEXAS and not Massachusetts, of all places.

He can’t argue this one since his location on a deck [I’m not kidding] faces east and doesn’t give him a view of the setting sun. All he can see is that wonndddeeerrrrfullll view of endless water.