When I lived in California, I spent a fair amount of time camping, hiking and exploring the northern half of the state, in the back county and along the coast. There was one moment on a beautiful, late spring day at Yosemite National Park, and I and my friends were late leaving. The sun had just started to set…and Half Dome became ablaze with alpenglow.

I’d known the reason, for years, that a pronounced red color shift takes place at the end of the day when the sun is at its lowest, when there are fewer air molecules and other particulates to scatter light. Otherwise, when the sun is highest, blue (sky) light gets through, as those wavelengths are short and capable of dodging obstacles…like molecules of oxygen. It’s because those red wave lengths of light have little resistance, and like to travel long and low at the end of the day, that we get to see so much of them just before dusk.

I’d also seen that phenomenon in pictures–in books–describing the changing colors and textures of alpine environments as the daylight itself changed. My first glimpse of those images caused me to chortle, as they seemed artificial, made by photographic trickery. But then I beheld that image at Yosemite, in real time, in real space. Since, I have paid keener attention to how things look in the waning light, particularly with that dramatic shift.

Still, I don’t think I’d ever perceived alpenglow–or, paid much attention to it–until a girlfriend named it for me. After, I seemed to see it everywhere: on skyscrapers in San Francisco (when it wasn’t fogged in); all along the East Bay hills, reflected in the window glass of homes there (such that it often looked like they were on fire. That, especially after the actual Oakland Hills Fire in 1990).

Then, one day, I was out looking for one of my kitties, when something out of my periphery in the eastern sky caught my attention. For the next five minutes, I managed to watch and record alpenglow on the spruces, from such a view they were framed by everything else.

Had I never seen that before? Those trees have been there since well before I was born, before I began to wander around these grounds. Did no one ever say, “Oh, Ron, look at how beautiful the spruce trees are, all alight with sunset!” Funny, how much of life we go through before being able to simply see.