Clouds, Landscapes And The Rising Sun
Friday, January 11th, 2008
The Philippine landscape I grew up with are coconut covered mountains, rice fields, open meadows and a river running through it. Up above are cloud formations that changes every second. Early mornings is when they are at its best and with the most bright colors. Sometimes when you’re lucky, in the afternoon you see low lying clouds pierced by the sun’s rays, a spray of light coming out from thick cloud cover. There are also those that lit the horizon especially at dusk. They are usually spread out horizontally in thin skeins of bright red, orange and blue. And just when the sun disappears, there is a brief moment of increased illumination before the sun finally sinks in the horizon.
It is quite different further north of the equator. On summer days, the sun stays until 9 o’clock in the evening. It starts to drop at 6 o’clock, but somehow lingers in the same spot for a couple of hours. So you have a lingering twilight that seems to have no end. I noticed this while driving along the arid Arizona desert. The glowing illumination and the strange cloud formations highlighted the canyons and turned the desert into a surreal lunar landscape. In the arctic, the sun rises but never sets. You will miss darkness. I wonder how it is in other parts of the globe….
