I live near Grant Park and I like to walk there in the morning and evening.  This morning I opened the front door to a blood red sunrise.  We usually don’t get those in the morning.  There was an oval of clear gray blue enveloped by layers of incandescent redness.  I don’t have any good photos of this morning’s mottled sky but I did take some of this evening’s sunset.

Sunrise opened my mind to the possibilities the sky can take here.  The sunset halted me midstride.  I’ve never seen such a show.  It was like the aurora borealis in New Mexico, slow, shifting, ethereal clouds arcing over the mountains in broad luminous bands stretching to the mesa with the bright yellow sun departing behind a smoky screen of silken fire beyond the western horizon.   Long filaments of cirrus sky flooded with color and dripping with light.

Sunsets like this remind me we are in this together.  I passed a neighbor walking her dog and I said this is pretty.  She said this is amazing.  She was right.  I like this time of year pivoting around the winter solstice.  I cherish the days more and rest up underneath the swirl of stars and orbiting moon cozy and grateful for shelter during the dark and long wintry nights.

In the transition between night and day you can sense the dual nature, the elements of the earth, the light of the world, almost grasping what is not a fact but a state of being.  But it slips away again.  Thankfully the light of the world is restored each day, a slate turquoise, a sea green, and then an expansive blush of color rises over the Manzanos.  The sprinkle of stars disappear.