My Ride Home

While not from Thursday night, this is just one of the
amazing sunsets here on the farm.

Changes in my schedule afford me the opportunity to experience a new part of the day as I drive home.  Thursday evening the sun had just dipped below the horizon as I headed North and East toward the farm.  Normally when I leave my off farm job, it is close to the changing of the days and very dark outside.  Stars are barely visible through the headlights of the car on my travels and often green eyes peer back at me from the tall grass on the side of the road or on occasion from directly in the middle of my lane of travel. This evening however, it was several hours earlier and the colors of the sky were amazing.  As I turned East onto the main route home the sky was a fire with shades of dark rose to light pastel pink.  Around the edges, night was encroaching, the blues from a deep grey to a light robins egg.

Between cow pasture and corn field the light grey of the rising fog was set against the deep dark greens of the woods and the pale khakis of recently mown hay fields.  Down through the valley approaching the river, the light grey turned to a thicker solid white against the beams of the headlights.  Clearing only for a moment as I crossed the river, the evening sky was reflected perfectly in the still water unblemished in the absence of a breeze.  Coming into more fog, the colors of the sky seemed to melt into a deep lavender purple, almost black at the edges.  The evening mist carried with it smells of smoldering brush piles from farmers clearing new fields and pastures combined with a thick, wet mossy odor.

My travels this evening yielded a different kind of wildlife.  People, enjoying the last of the warm evening were returning to their homes on bicycles, children holding hands with their parents walking on the recreational trail and chasing lightning bugs in their front yards.  Cows and horses were still up looking for the perfect corner of the pasture to relax and grab a peaceful night's sleep.  Back at the farm, the fog had yet to settle around the lake and the night sky was spilling forth full of stars.  Inside to say good night to little man and back out to feed the rabbits, the breeze had picked up ever so slightly, just enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay. 

To top off the evening, as I stepped outside to watch the lightning bugs, off to the East, the moon rose over the lake.  Hanging in the sky, it appeared as a slightly misshapen egg yolk, the setting sun long past our horizon still reflecting a deep orange yellow onto the surface of the moon.  Rising higher in the sky, the area around the moon took on an unusual shade of purple.  The bull frogs began singing, the glow of campfires were visible from the state park across the lake, and the star filled sky wrapped around me like an old familiar blanket as I got ready to head inside and capture some restful sleep of my own.

And people wonder why I moved out of the city...