Hours

Our hours are limited, for sure. Yesterday, my wife and I wished to go for a "Sunday ride", which we do when we have the chance. An afternoon Sunday ride is a wonderful little excursion, usually to nowhere in particular. John Steinbeck, in his great book "Travels With Charlie" talks about the Spanish word vacilar...to generally move in some non-defined direction mostly with the purpose of enjoying the journey. That's the Sunday ride. Somehow, the ride finalizes the week that was and resets in preparation for the week to come.

We got delayed and our afternoon ride turned into a late afternoon or early evening ride. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, we were vacilar-ing westward. My wife mentioned that it was the "golden hour" and how it doesn't last long. I was reminded of my school days and reading "The Outsiders" and how Robert Frost's poem was featured in it. I tried to recite the poem as best I could saying something like...

Nature's first green is gold.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Then something something something.
So Eden sank to grief.
Something something something.
Nothing gold can stay.

My poetry recital started out pretty good (and the sunset in front of us was the perfect setting for poetry), but then my something somethings kind of went awry. My wife was still a little impressed that I remembered something from school. Or, something something something.

The actual poem is:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Source: https://poets.org/poem/nothing-gold-can-stay

We chatted about the "golden hour" and wondered about it. I did a Hey Google and the Wikipedia article explained it was the time just after sunrise and just before sunset. We kinda already knew that. It said it was the "magic hour" to photographers and cinematographers who relish the lighting then.

I once heard or read somewhere an interview by the director who made the famous holding up the boombox scene in the 80s movie "Say Anything". As I recall, he said they were thinking about wrapping up the the day and they'd come back tomorrow. But, it was the magic hour, so they were like, "Let's just shoot it now!" I think he mentioned that they shot it one time and it was done. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but that's how I remember it and it makes a good point!

"[The boombox scene] was the last thing shot on the last day with the last moment of sunlight," recalled director Cameron Crowe.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/blogs/movie-news/tale-anything-boombox-scene-25-years-later-152707672.html

My wife then mentioned the "blue hour", a term that I'd never heard. "Hey Google, what's the blue hour?" Google and Wikipedia told me it's the time just before sunrise and just after sundown. It's the time when the sky is orange at the horizon and blue above...another magical time.

And since we were on a roll, or she was, my wife also mentioned the "witching hour" and wondered when that was. I've heard of it, but didn't know when it was. Again, Google and Wikipedia tell us the witching hour, aka the Devil's hour, is when witches and spirits are most active and powerful in their sorcery. Evidently, it's the hour after midnight and between 3 and 4 a.m. (I guess between 1 and 3 a.m. we're okay.)

Anyway, we vacilar our way along and were going begin to make our way back. We took a left turn. It was beautiful, the golden hour, I stopped, rolled down the window, and snapped this photo:

_{Photo by me (@crrdlx) taken with a Samsung A32 phone. The photo is unedited.}

This was the golden hour, but you can see that the blue hour is seeping in. Call it the golden-blue hour. It's a dreamy, sweet, beautiful time.

The left turn road turned out to be a dead end (wasn't marked), but that was okay. We'll just turn around and vacilar our way home.

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