It's hard to define the amalgam of thoughts and emotions that went careening through my brain while staring into a Nags Head sunset last night. My family & I packed up the truck & drove from the in-laws' early yesterday morning toward our trip-within-a-trip on the Outer Banks. Being only 1.75 hrs from yet another piece of heaven makes for a ridiculously cool family getaway part deux.
After 4 hrs. of beach-side ocean gazing, and the greatest buffet of crab legs we'd ever witnessed, much less gorged upon, all four of us were teleported to Mars to watch our sun paint out the rest of the day...
If you've never had the privilege to experience the sand dunes of Nags Head, trust me when I say: it's
like no other place in the Northern Hemisphere. Through all of my travels, I thought I'd seen sunsets...but after last night, I now feel as if I'd left my planet for the first time. Hundreds of people festooned the horizon of each and every dune crest in a stippled pattern of moving outlines. Kite strings dripped to earth, connecting sky to sand at random intervals. Water from the sound-side glistened from the falling sun's ever-morphing palette, while the wind carried traces of brine from the Atlantic's endless view behind us. Above us, the growing moon loomed like an approving celestial eye, taking it all in. And, before I exit this diatribe of descriptive prose, the main ingredient needs to be exploited to the nth...
Serving as the backdrop to everything was a sunset that could've only been rivaled by the aurora borealis. When the sun disappeared, the light show was just starting. The intensity of hues that brush-stroked the sky's canvas looked more superimposed than real. The deepness of reds, pinks & oranges emitted a euphoric grandeur that was downright interplanetary. While standing underneath it all, "surreal" wasn't a justifiable enough adjective.
Carrying all of these memories back to Hampton made our late-night return trip bearable. Even with sand still in all the wrong places.
Your use of description leaves me at a loss for words...almost. That could make another painting I could do and I currently working on 1 painting and several drawings (I have to recount how many I have written out).
Posted by: Jennifer Eckert | July 03, 2009 at 08:43 PM
WOW! That sunset IS extraordinary. Sunsets are my favorite thing in the world to paint and I love using Alizarin Crimson and Bright Red. I see both of those colors in this photo. Awesome stuff!
Posted by: Kelli | July 08, 2009 at 02:10 AM