Thursday, February 4, 2021

Scarlet Night and Day

Last night in the minutes just after sunset, when the light was intense from the unseen sun, the rim of the horizon below the clouds was a rich scarlet, as red as any sunset I have seen. The form of Shadow Mountain in the preserve to the west, that we can see in the daytime, was outlined in perfect black against the red. We stood at the windows and marveled at the spectacle.

This morning the red had returned, in different form. I went out walking after sunrise, and coming back in the still fresh morning, I decided to detour into the part of the undeveloped desert that is about to become developed. The trucks might arrive any day and the place will change.

The sky was perfect crisp blue. My detour rewarded by a rare sight, a hot air balloon, brilliant red, floating in the south, past the storage unit facility. It looked to be over the undeveloped land around Bell Road. From where I could it it,  it was in the air behind the power lines at a point where the towers made the sagging cables cross in multiple cross hatches. The balloon looked to be in the web of the lines. I watched while it made its wade through the lines horizontally, with some upward momentum. By the time I turned and looked again, it had lifted itself out from them into the blue sky.


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