Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

THE GOLDEN HOUR

As I write this, Emporia sits under a clear sky. Cobalt blue stretches from one horizon to the other: 180 degrees of happiness. It feels good, especially since we’ve spent the last few days in a cold, damp gloom.

Although some days the sun can’t claw its way through a thick sky, we often have abundant sunshine. Less brilliant, but just as delightful, are moonlight and starlight.

But of all the celestial offerings, there’s an hour of light that may be the most profound. It’s the hour, give or take, after sunrise, and the hour before sunset. This luminous light doesn’t occur every day but when it does, the Kansas landscape wears its Sunday best.

This particular quality of illumination makes everything look good. And this is not just ordinary evening light I’m talking about – it’s the cleanest and clearest of light, glimmering and charismatic. When this light is cast, even power poles shine like grinning children. It turns dilapidated farm buildings into glowing shrines.

One February evening as Dave and I were driving home from Salina, the sun let loose with a carpet-roll of tingly light. We were southbound on a county road; the sun’s rays streamed from the west and every tall weed stood in the spotlight. Each plant shimmered as if it were the prettiest belle of the ball, dressed in its finest garb.

“It brings out the dimensionality of things,” Dave said when I asked him how he, as a photographer, perceives this light. “The lighting from the side brings out form and texture. It sculpts the hills.”

When you throw a small, flat rock across a lake at a proper angle, it skips, skimming the surface of the water. And that’s what this light does, too, because it’s coming in at such an angle to the earth. It hits on the hills and sends low spots into the shadows.

Last August, my mother and brother and I took a drive in Stafford County. It was one of those evenings of enchanting light. Everything was defined and incandescent. It was as if I couldn’t take a bad photograph. On a road thick with sand, that sand shimmered. The Radium elevator was radiant.

Meteorologist Mark Bogner of KSN-TV in Wichita gave me an explanation of this particular quality of light: “The sun is shining through much more of the atmosphere at those lower angles, thus more of it is filtered, scattered and reflected, giving it a different ‘temperature color’ and overall tone.”

It’s a warm and gorgeous light, but unless we’re looking for it, we may not see it. Paying attention to how light falls across the land may not rank high on our to-do lists.

This golden hour doesn’t show up every day, but when it does, like a sunset, it can stop your heart (in a good way).

Once, as I was traveling eastbound through Rice County, the evening sun spread its love over a wheat field. I could barely stand the intensity of golden light on golden grain.

I pulled off of the highway onto a dirt road, stepped from my car and gazed in awe at a magical kingdom. Everything glowed; the sun’s angle lit clouds from below. The power of the view swelled inside my chest; tears came to my eyes.

Pure beauty connects us to not only what’s in front of us, but also to everything good that is and to everything good that ever has been. Looking upon that glowing wheat field, flashes of unrelated memories came to me – a childhood moment with my grandmother as well as a time my teenage friends and I laughed so hard we cried.

This particular quality of light is palpable – it vibrates in your body. This cast of light is fresh and clean and, in a strange way, offers clarity of inner vision as well as outer vision. In one bright moment you can feel absolutely and totally connected with the world.

Because Kansas sunsets are so gorgeous, we are often tricked into looking only to the west. But, as the sun tilts toward the horizon and approaches landfall, take a turn to the east and see your world in a whole new light.

Copyright 2011 ~ Cheryl Unruh

10 Comments

  1. When my son was little he and I would stand out in the yard in the late afternoon/early evening and look at the “golden light” as it inched its was across the yard to the tops of the tree line. It was always a calming, peaceful way to end the day…still is. Beautiful column, Cheryl, as always.

  2. Wow! Once again you have managed to capture with your beautiful prose what I can only faintly think in the depths of my mind somewhere. Thanks for the attribution and making me sound so good…a dry scientist in the company of a great poet…

  3. Thank you, Kelley and Janet.

    And thank you, Mark. I am so grateful to have you to turn to for explanations and to help me relay weather concepts to readers. You respond quickly and always give me something that seems to fit perfectly! 🙂

  4. Hi Cheryl (and Dave!)
    As you know I love photographs of clouds, trees, trails and all that is a kin to them! I never get tired of looking at photographs of them OR words that one uses to describe their beauty! Like your article, Cheryl!! Can’t wait to read more about the wonders in nature through your eyes. Peggy

  5. Another lovely column. ‘180 degrees of happiness’ and ‘some days the sun can’t claw its way through a thick sky’… really emotive. This is why people read your stuff!

    Some day you must see the soft evening light in the English Lake District. And – you may have heard this before! – twilight in Venice is pretty amazing.

  6. I enjoyed your column so much. Thank you. You’re right, that kind of light doesn’t happen every day. I wonder why not. Does Mark the meteorologist know? Sometimes after a summer storm it looks that way – and like you say, it can make your heart stop, it’s so wonderful.

  7. amazing writing…love “power poles shine like grinning children.” I still think back to a day when I was a teenager in autumn, sitting on the dock of a lake in the golden hour, or, walking home from a sports practice in the country, past the stone farm house. Even as a cynical teen who couldnt wait to get out of the “sticks” it took my breath away.

  8. Hi Cheryl, I enjoyed “The Golden Hour.” I’ve often admired that light experience particularly around the times of the equinoxes. The long shadows just before and after the foliage peaks are especially nice.
    I’ve never found the perfect word to describe the light as I see it. From time to time I have found a way to use crepuscular and vespertine but those miss the real hour. I recently thought of aurum – related to gold and “shining dawn”. I suppose it’s in your court to coin the perfect adjective. Best wishes, Dave

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