A great amount of human instinct expresses itself every day in our lives. Just because we’ve put on high-heeled shoes or a sport coat and walk amid concrete and pavement doesn’t mean we’ve severed the connections that bound us to existence for the past several hundred thousand years. One of my personal favorites is as silent as it is simple, and it connects us to all of our days gone before. When you’re looking at a photo of a sunrise or a sunset, how do you know which one it is?
This is very unscientific but, personally, I find there’s simply an instinct that separates the two. The qualities of light separate them. The simple appearance of earth and sky, of water, land and air give rise to knowledge held deep within. Beyond the quantifiable, though, hides so much more.
In a quantifiable way, sunsets are typically more red, with more heat haze visible. Sunrises are more blue or white, with surrounding air either clear or decorated with morning mist. In a more instinctive way though, our minds can jump to the right conclusion with rarely a flaw.
The two daily events lend context to the experiences that fall between. They’re a connection to outdoor days past by the hundred.
A winter sunrise over water calls upon memories of ducks whistling through the night’s last sky above. It comes with the anticipation and chill, dressed by adrenaline’s early beginnings. Wood ducks whistle by in the earliest moments of light. Then, with the sun up, the first sight of migrators in V formation impossibly high against the blue stir our own deep longings to wander.
Sunset over a mountainside comes with the satisfaction of a day thoroughly lived. Walking downhill toward home after many hours struggling in the other direction, feeling the lightest kiss of the sun on your neck, borne along in the drift of cool air falling in the afternoon thermals, there’s the certain knowledge that, for the day just passed at least, life was all it could have been.
Sunrise in a Mississippi River swamp comes with the scent of oak’s tannins expressed from the bark by a climbing stand’s spiked corners. Woodies may whistle by here, too, but this is the domain of larger animals. The chuff and huff of critters just out of sight remind us so.
Sunset in the sands along the Gulf of Mexico marks the point where so many of us share a sample of the outdoors with extended family, many of whom may be more indoorsy than out. After a day in the salt, skin tight from the sun, comes a welcome, manmade chill, acknowledgement of nature’s power and our own blessed methods of relief. In the warm, wet night air, leaning on a high rail and listening to the surf, all our sunsets can come home to sleep.
Kevin Tate is the outdoors writer for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
