The fall atmosphere explores new bands of the spectrum, resolving deep colors not seen the rest of the year. For a brief period each day the sky burns with new energies, rejoicing in little-known hues of red and orange. Over ten years I recall the growing intensity of sunsets in October, looking west along the Eagle Lake Road each day over the crest at McFarland Hill, a blazing panorama spreads across the horizon and reaches to the azimuth. The profile of Blue Hill in the distance across the bay is magnified a hundred times into a giant mountain, the sun's energy streaming from behind like a holy light. The color is indescribable, one day scarlet, the next crimson, the colors deeper and deeper as winter approaches mixed with blues, violet and black.
Patterns appear defined by the western cloud layer.
The next day a low cloud bank along the western horizon obscured the sunset. An overcast sky further east lay above it, leaving a generous opening in between, a horizontal window stretching from north to south. Between the panels of the cloud mask there was a visual channel reaching out into the solar system. I believe these events at sunset are as important and revealing of he nature of physical reality and the nature of matter as the events studied by quantum physicists in giant multi-billion dollar particle accelerators. While the particle physicists are rending apart and peeling back layer after layer of the constituent entities of matter an alternating gradient synchrotrons and electron storage rings, the physical universe is exposing its very heart at sunset.