Sunsets

If a time of day can hold memories and emotions, the evening does for me. Sunsets will always remind me of home. When my parents built our house they walled it with windows. I remember pressing myself against the dinning room windows as a child, looking at the evening sky all around me, and feeling as if I was within it. Evenings could be chaotic; Dad would be getting home, Mom would be finishing dinner while trying to get us to set the table, round up siblings, or just plain help. But the great thing about all those windows was that no matter what I was doing, or what errand Mom sent me on to another part of the house, I could keep an eye on the gentle (and occasionally dramatic) changes in the evening sky. The kitchen lights would glow into the newly arriving night as we all settled down to eat.

I have seen incredible sunsets from mountain tops and never ending desert plains, but those childhood sunsets over the back pasture are the ones I treasure the most. They are the ones in my dreams after a day of telephone conversations with family.

Provo sunsets infusing color into the brown Wasatch mountains capture my attention and make me smile. But mostly they remind me that further west there are sheep bedding down, evening prayers being said, and family.