Full Moon Rising

A couple of months ago I was driving home on a Northbound highway at sunset. The sky was filled with layered clouds, the residual effect of evening thunderstorms. The sun was low on the horizon and shafts of sunlight pierced the various cloud layers, lighting them from underneath. Some areas of cloud showed a natural brilliant orange while other areas not directly in the sunlight, glowed in shades of blue.

I was approaching a highway junction which required turning eastbound - over a bridge and away from the sunset. I thought about taking an earlier exit and watching the sunset from a park. Colorful sunsets like this can brighten and fade in a pretty short period of time. Instead I just considered it part of the passing beauty of life. Even as I took the exit eastbound I knew the colors would still be up there in the sky behind me.

With the change in driving direction I was greeted by an entirely new view. To the East the sky was dusky gray. The full moon had risen just a touch above the horizon and was low enough to still have a yellow glow. It was framed by thin layers of clouds in various shades of bluish-gray. A lone thin cloud stretched from left to right, bisecting the moon. The scene was lit by a different palette of colors, more subtle but just as sublime.

It seems we often we get caught up in trying to hang on to fleeting views that we want to make last. We get the urge to try to stop the clock and linger in an experience - when in reality we can't even slow the clock down. I'd appreciated the sunset for it's brilliance - and having let it go I found in my future an entirely new beauty that I hadn't imagined. At the time I recall thinking that there was something to write about in the experience but it's only now, settled in a new place, that the words have found their way out.