Subtropical Intracoastal Sunset

My husband and I often take walks to the Intracoastal to watch the sunset.  The south Florida sunsets can sometimes last an hour or longer, and the colors of the clouds change constantly.  As the sun sinks toward the horizon they are lit brilliantly in bright yellow and yellow-orange from the side and/or directly on.  Later the clouds are embellished below with pale salmon, pink, ruddy blue-violet, and dusty mauve as the sun sinks below the horizon.  The sky itself turns from richest cobalt and electric cyan blue to paler and dustier versions of blue and blue-violet, with pale yellow, orange and red splashes on high cirrus clouds near the horizon and in the east as well.  Finally, as the living rock we sit on blocks the sun completely, dusty rose and violet fade into Kindle-gray, as the microscopic particles of moisture in the atmosphere are lit from beneath by the huge coastal city we live in, and the spell is broken.  We begin our slow walk home as we discuss the amazing light show we have just witnessed.

In "Looking for the Gulf Motel," Presidential Poet, Richard Blanco writes so beautifully about his identity, formed as a child by his poor but loving Latino Family in a natural south Florida.  My husband and I are two of the snow birds responsible for the paving over of south Florida, but we can still find nature in small spaces, and in our glorious subtropical Florida sky at all times of the day, but especially at sunset.

looking north on the Intracoastal as the sun dips toward the western horizon

big fat pink cumulous clouds and the moon

A natural area shows what Lake Worth looked like before Snow Birds