After enjoying a fun two-week-long road trip, travelling to Cedar Key and parts farther south, we’re back in the land of frosty autumns. So long, shorts and sandals. Good-bye, waist-expanding deep-fried coconut shrimp. But, thanks to a detour we took to Southampton, Ontario, on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, we’ve been very lucky to continue doing two wonderful things this week that we got into the habit of doing in Florida: walking along a beach and taking in the setting sun.

A sunset in Cedar Key, Florida, taken November 2, 2023

You can’t watch a sunset and be matter of fact about it. “Yup, another evening event under fairly ideal meteorological conditions resulting from the earth’s rotation and refraction of the sun’s rays with the upper edge of the sun’s disk coincident with the horizon” said no one ever.

The setting sun over Lake Huron, taken from the beach at Southampton, Ontario, with the iconic Chantry Island lighthouse silhouetted in the distance. Photographed on November 14, 2023.

You might reminisce or reflect. Let out the psychic equivalent of a big deep breath. Wonder about what it would be like to literally ride off into the sunset. Quickly look around for your significant other and snap a selfie. Or just stand in awe.

Watching the sunset in Tobermory, Ontario, with the famous Chi-Cheemaun ferry in the background, taken on September 19, 2021.

Is it because sunsets are so fleeting? You’ve only got a couple of minutes to savour the whole thing. Or maybe it’s because they just seem so full of portent.

There’s a message up there somewhere

Two different sunsets taken from our living room window in Fernie, B.C. Left: photographed on December 12, 2018. Right: photographed November 22, 2021.

It’s a plain fact that sunsets only get better when there are clouds/bad weather/storms around. A clear sky almost always delivers a ho-hum sunset.

So for all you cup-half-full folks out there, myself included, sunsets are the manifestation of good things coming out of shitty not so great situations.

A uniquely graphic sunset, photographed in Fernie on October 23, 2021.

Sunsets are also one of those moments, I find, when you’re very clearly put in your place. They may be fleeting but when they do appear they are all-encompassing, seeping into the farthest edges of your peripheral vision.

It’s no wonder so many ancient peoples considered the sun a god or goddess. They do have a tendency to look like messages from the beyond.

Watch a sunset. It’s good for you

An article published in Canada’s National Post last spring entitled We Should All Be Watching More Sunsets For The Good Of Our Mental Health, reported that two British researchers had published a study proving that sunsets (and sunrises) give you an extra boost (in a good way) to your emotional state. Evidently, storms, rainbows, clear blue skies and starry night skies are good, too, but they don’t deliver the transformative awe of a sunset (or sunrise).

What a really good dose of awe will get you, according to the research, is improvement in mood, increased positive emotions and a decrease in stress.

So, what about sunrises?

The sky just before sunrise over the lake at our cottage on the Bruce Peninsula, taken September 24, 2022.

As an Account Director for a large advertising firm in Canada, my late dad used to say with some authority that, in a photo, you can’t tell the difference between a sunset and a sunrise. This was an important point for him because if he was directing an ad campaign for, say, a brand new car, his photo crew could romance that shiny new toy in the best possible light–the rosy gold hues of a supposed sunset–first thing in the morning and have the whole shoot done and dusted before lunch.

Honestly, he was probably right. But, as a tragically overexcitable teenager, it irked me no end. Sunsets, I fumed, were unmistakably better because they were poignancy writ large! How can you not see that–even in a photo?!?!

Yes, there were times, back in the day, when I had a notably loose grip on common sense.

Interestingly, the researchers who found sunsets and sunrises to be awe-inspiring used photos for their study.

Nonetheless, I’m sticking to my teenaged zealousness in the sunsets-are-different department.

The brightest part of our shorter days

When I was collecting photos for this post, I started to realize that I’d taken all of them in the fall or winter. Turns out, there’s a reason for that. Summer air is often more polluted (hello, wildfires). Pollution particles will reflect light back (towards the sun) or block the light, resulting in less brilliant, often hazier, sunsets. Fall and winter air is usually cleaner. Hence, gob-smacking sunsets.

Sunset over Morro Bay, CA, with local tourist attraction Morro Rock, a 576-foot-tall volcanic plug, in silhouette at far right. Photographed on November 25, 2017.

Here goes the sun

These past few days Southampton’s beach has been windswept and very chilly. The town has put up temporary windbreak fencing to protect the fragile dunes from winter’s blasts. Many of the old cottages set back behind the dunes have boarded-up windows in preparation for the expected pummelling of snow and hail.

Our days will keep getting shorter for several more weeks. The weather will grow colder.

But, oh, the sunsets yet to come.