Nightfall

This evening’s crepuscular listicle juxtaposes two dramatic snapshots of the carriage barn and icehouse less than two hours apart (in 2020 and 2021). From early dusk to twilight, these photographs bookend Rosslyn’s spellbinding close of day “curtain call”. Nightfall, evenfall, eventide,… The English language reveals our fascination with this daily ritual.

This painterly capture at 7:09pm feels to me like the first scene in a film. Or the last. Moody and almost melodramatic.

Compare the feeling of the buttery backlighting and pastoral setting with this 8:45pm capture (photographed a year earlier on the same day.)

The cropping is tighter, but that’s not the only reason for a marked metamorphosis in atmosphere and feeling one hour and thirty six minutes later.

This is the gloaming. Mysterious. At once more intimate and yet more removed. Breathtakingly, beautiful but possibly just a little bit spooky too.

I’ll step aside and leave observations up to you. And to stir the pot a little I offer you some nightfalls past.

Early birds enthralled with the daily matinal unshading embrace the mystery (and the wellspring of possibility that flows through it.) I know. I am one. A “morning lark” married to a “night owl”. Opposites attract. The dawning invigorates me, and the gloaming invigorates Susan.

(Source: Dawning)

I am and always have been a morning person. But no matter how firm my affinity for the early hours of the day, the nightfall fandango gets me every time.

Bathed in buttery sunshine — midday’s afterglow or eventide’s preamble? — the icehouse glows toward day’s end.

(Source: Sunlight Swaddled)

This glow (captured in my “Sunlight Swaddled” post) is simply a volumed vessel for what illuminates the first photo above.

This misty sundown redefined the limits.

Moody dome. Warm light, gently filtered. Colors few, but saturation intense. And mist. Ground-clinging, gossamer haze blurring the ground-to-trees transition. Mysterious. Mesmerizing. Beyond beautiful.

(Source: Misty Sundown)

Sometimes there’s mist. Mysterious mist. Sometimes there’s none at all.

It was already well into nightfall when we walked from the house toward the barns, but the day wasn’t yielding without playing out a sky-wide drama. It was spectacular! We stopped and gawked. We acknowledged our good fortune. And then we gawked some more.

With last remnants of fading light, we made our way past the carriage barn and ice house toward the garden.

(Source: Tie Dye Dome)

And now for a more lyrical twist.

Pen me a poem
of flickering daylight,
flirting with nightfall;
of sleepless longing
for toil-oiled muscles
and limber limbed spring…

(Source: “October Rain, Wordy”)

Today I’m again feeling those toil-oiled muscles!

Evening,
barely blushing,
silhouettes
familiar forms,
conjures 
nostalgia
or apparitions
or words willed
against the
gloaming. 

(Source: Misty Sundown)

Always apparitions. Almost always.

Niece reads in hammock
from golden hour to gloaming,
mist mingling prose.

(Source: Mist Mingling Prose)

More mist…

   At dusk, crescent moon
   and mustachioed column
   grin, share a chuckle. 

(Source: Crescent Moon Haiku)

And a final dusky moment to capture my percolating enthusiasm for the upcoming boating season!

Wake lifting, cresting,
board surging and legs pumping,
surfing into dusk.
— Geo Davis

(Source: Sundown Surf)