Morning sun
The usual seven AM heavy traffic greeted me as I eased my way out of our side road one morning late in the reluctantly departing winter. A single two lane high way winds its way up the heart of paradise Camano, emptying neighborhoods tucked in back road nooks and crannies along the way, strings of cars that often seeming to fill every inch of the way through the main land village of Stanwood,over the hills and on out to real world I - 5 and beyond. On this particular morning the slow down at the street light in town snaked its way onto the last steep hill leading from the island to the stretch of causeway, bounded by low pastour and wet land that separates our semi-island from the main land of Snohomish County. Edging my way down the hill, bumper to bumper, still fuming from the frustrated words exchanged with my sweetie; she wanted to watch a TV show uninterrupted, I wanted to resolve some silly little issue; I saw something that defies description
The road off the island faces directly east, looking up the Stillaguamish valley, the ridge of Cascade mountains that stand hard on the Puget Sound country to the east clearly visible from lofty Mt. Baker on the north on past Pilchuck and many other peaks, names not familiar to me marching off to the south. On this particular morning something wonderful had happened between atmosphere and light, the entire west facing slops of the mountains appeared elongated and flattened, almost as if the foot hills and mountains were a vertical cliff face, much taller and closer than they really are. I've see this kind of optical illusion at sea, ships several miles distant appearing to stand higher out of the water than their length, but this is the first time I have seen it happen over an expanse of dry land, and the effect on the mountains was much more dramatic than I had ever witnessed on the water. As I got down to the bottom of the hill where the vista suddenly opens further to the south the effect of the mountains magnified even more; lucky the traffic came to a stop at that moment because something caught my eye that transfixed my attention.
The sun. In a cleft of two mountain peaks, black against the brightening morning sky there was a very red rim of brighter light. It was the top of the sun just showing in in the v shaped space between the mountains, easily observable with the unprotected eye due to the very thick atmosphere through which I was looking. How long it takes the disk of the sun to transit the visible horizon, I don't know; but in these wildly distorted conditions it seemed to be several minutes during which the movement of our planet steadily crossed the face of the still very red sun, filling the space between the mountains as it moved before my eyes.
Seeing the actual disk of the sun can be a one time affair, backs of the eyes permanently burned to a useless mass of jelly for the unfortunate sole who attempts the impossible. But on rare occasions the atmosphere will thicken between the where you are and the horizon and a very few minutes of clear observation of our local star can be enjoyed. Usually at sunset on the ocean when a line of clouds blanket most of the western sky, and then suddenly as the sun gets withing a half distance of its apparent circumference from the horizon a thin strip will open and it is possible to look straight into the inferno, seeing half or more of the disk sinking below the rim of the planet as we spin off away from our star. At these times the curved surface on which we are living is clearly visible, giving a better feel for the small size of our home. Seeing it against the back drop of the greatly distorted mountain ridges gave another perspective, how very close we live to this star; almost scary close but then our fragile film of habitable space on this rock could not exist even a hairs width further away, and.....suddenly the light of the sun overcame the atmosphere and I had to quickly look away, just in time to hit the accelerator as the break lights ahead of me twinkled out and off we all went in the mad rush of our lives.
The road off the island faces directly east, looking up the Stillaguamish valley, the ridge of Cascade mountains that stand hard on the Puget Sound country to the east clearly visible from lofty Mt. Baker on the north on past Pilchuck and many other peaks, names not familiar to me marching off to the south. On this particular morning something wonderful had happened between atmosphere and light, the entire west facing slops of the mountains appeared elongated and flattened, almost as if the foot hills and mountains were a vertical cliff face, much taller and closer than they really are. I've see this kind of optical illusion at sea, ships several miles distant appearing to stand higher out of the water than their length, but this is the first time I have seen it happen over an expanse of dry land, and the effect on the mountains was much more dramatic than I had ever witnessed on the water. As I got down to the bottom of the hill where the vista suddenly opens further to the south the effect of the mountains magnified even more; lucky the traffic came to a stop at that moment because something caught my eye that transfixed my attention.
The sun. In a cleft of two mountain peaks, black against the brightening morning sky there was a very red rim of brighter light. It was the top of the sun just showing in in the v shaped space between the mountains, easily observable with the unprotected eye due to the very thick atmosphere through which I was looking. How long it takes the disk of the sun to transit the visible horizon, I don't know; but in these wildly distorted conditions it seemed to be several minutes during which the movement of our planet steadily crossed the face of the still very red sun, filling the space between the mountains as it moved before my eyes.
Seeing the actual disk of the sun can be a one time affair, backs of the eyes permanently burned to a useless mass of jelly for the unfortunate sole who attempts the impossible. But on rare occasions the atmosphere will thicken between the where you are and the horizon and a very few minutes of clear observation of our local star can be enjoyed. Usually at sunset on the ocean when a line of clouds blanket most of the western sky, and then suddenly as the sun gets withing a half distance of its apparent circumference from the horizon a thin strip will open and it is possible to look straight into the inferno, seeing half or more of the disk sinking below the rim of the planet as we spin off away from our star. At these times the curved surface on which we are living is clearly visible, giving a better feel for the small size of our home. Seeing it against the back drop of the greatly distorted mountain ridges gave another perspective, how very close we live to this star; almost scary close but then our fragile film of habitable space on this rock could not exist even a hairs width further away, and.....suddenly the light of the sun overcame the atmosphere and I had to quickly look away, just in time to hit the accelerator as the break lights ahead of me twinkled out and off we all went in the mad rush of our lives.
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