I had occasion to speak with a friend who lives many latitudes north, much closer to the  arctic circle than I live. One hears tales of the lands of midnight sun in summer but the opposite means lands devoid of much sunlight in the wintertime. In my understanding sunset, and the sunrise, were  sort of non-events.it would be light, it would get less light then a rosy glow perhaps and then dark.

In my experience sunsets are an event! (I, not being a morning person have viewed few sunrises and the few I have viewed seem much more subdued than the show put on by the sunset.)

There are days I have driven, rushing traffic , to get to a good place to view sunset.Even when at a nice venue for seeing the sun sink behind the horizon I will jog back and forth  to get different angles and seek the descending orb and it's streamers through the frame of different trees or catching alternate angles on the water.

The  change from daylight to dusk can span  and hour but , inevitably, it is over and it becomes an evening sky. A person living a nice long lifetime may be able to present for twenty or thirty thousand days and thus, days drawing to a close.

The possibility of having the time to actually watch the sun go down is another matter. The  ability to good conditions for a lovely sunset is a variable.A cloudless day allows one to see the sun dip below the horizon but it is quite true that a few clouds do add color and beauty to the sunset.If there are too many thick clouds then the sunset may be totally obscured.

I celebrate every chance I can enjoy the  changing colors at the of a day's light. I hope you will enjoy the  scenes I have captured here.These are all of  winter sunsets. There is something marvelous about the contrast, the yin and yang of the  fiery sun setting over a cold winter landscape, the bold hues of the daytime star shining  rich tones over the monotonous white, silvery-grey  blankets of winter.

 Today the wind howls fierce and glazes the land is  ice as it waves the branches almost to the point of snapping.In four months or so the breeze will gently wave verdant fresh leaves as the trees offer shade from hot sun. I live in a place of all seasons, fierce, frigid winters and humid hot summer. I live with trees all around who stand through the same drastic weather changes that we humans and animals endure. As human trials and tribulations toss my soul with stress and strain I turn to the trees for a calming companionship. I have realized , only recently, how much author Hermann Hesse also cared for trees. This post  shares some current photos ( January 2014) of trees i visit and some wonderful words from Hesse. Peace.

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.” Hermann Hesse Bäume, Betrachtungen und Gedichte

 Many close the doors tight and  turn into strictly indoor beings during the winter. there are people who go out of doors no greater distance from door to car door, parked car to building door and all the while grumbling about the cold weather and the season of winter.
They miss the sparkle, sharper and more iridescent than the glimmer of sequins, that the cold snow radiates even with the slightest bit of sun or the glow of the full moon from clear winter sky.
Huddled inside listening to the furnace rattle and hum they do not hear the  elegant sound of ice coated branches  tossing like chimes in the  wind wafting through them.
Living in the temperate world of roof and walls all day and night, day after day they   see the winter outside as but grey and white yet if they were to spend some time searching the landscape they would find just how remarkable the bits of color, a random berry preserved on the twig, the varied shades of dried grasses and leaves can be to the eye that is familiar with gleaning what it can from to the winter scene.

Winter, to those who tend to avoid weather and  persist in climate controlled fabricated worlds, seems like a big old  yeti they avoid and fear. they do not venture forth to note the delicate and intricate beauty nature's designs leave upon the landscape.

 “How many things by season season'd are, To their right praise and true perfection!”
William Shakespeare

 “She enjoys rain for its wetness, winter for its cold, summer for its heat. She loves rainbows as much for fading as for their brilliance. It is easy for her, she opens her heart and accepts everything.” 
 Morgan Llwelyn

 “In winter, play with the snow; in summer, play with the Sun! Do not wait for something to come; everything is already here! In autumn, play with the leaves, in spring, play with the flowers! In summer, don’t wait for the winter; in winter, don’t wait for the summer! Everything is already here, in this present time you live in!”  Mehmet Murat ildan

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” Lewis Carroll

 It snowed all the day long this New Year's Day. It snowed long and steady and blanketed all in fresh new dress of crystalline shimmer. Walking on empty city streets where I was like a lone pioneer in a wilderness I listened to the snow. Yes, snow makes sound. Sometimes it is accompanied by howling winds but this day was only gentle breezes that helped create it's shiiishhhh as it fell upon itself. The people of my city's neighborhood? Perhaps resting after revelry of New Year's Eve celebrations. Perhaps  sitting  magnetized to athletic champions performing their  war-like exercises broadcast on televisions in  nice warm living rooms.The streets were quiet and about the only other life I saw besides myself and my faithful canine walking companion were the  birds. there were few of those even as most nestled in their nests to stay snug and dry out of the snow filling their skies. There were the crows, the big birds out and about squawking their greetings to the new day  or were they just commenting on the weather?

 “Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again~
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.”  Mary Oliver ''New and Selected Poems, Vol.1''