Unlike the cold and foggy evenings of the summer, this September Sunday evening was warm, pleasant and shows the best San Francisco has to offer.
Grey Whale Cove State Beach is located a few miles south of Pacifica, just beyond Devil’s Slide. I’d driven this section of Highway 1 many times but never noticed the beach. There’s a well-marked parking lot right off the highway but one can not see the beach from the road. There’s a trail and stairs that lead down to beach. Getting down is pretty easy but the stairs and be bit taxing on the way back up.
Gray Whale Cove State Beach at Sunset
Brilliant colors as the sun sets on Pomponio State Beach.
Brilliant Colors
The sun descends, marking the beginning of a long winter night at Pomponio State Beach, just south of Half Moon Bay
Fading Winter Light
As I drove up the beach in Half Moon Bay, I was enthralled by the dramatic light from the approaching storm. Just a minute or two after I created this image, the sky went grey and it started to rain fairly hard
Moments Before the Storm
The Start of the Longest Night
For most people the winter solstice, as known as the official start of winter, is just a curiosity and that often gets overlooked being just 4 days before Christmas. However, Christmas is in late December because of the solstice. The early Christian church placed in Christmas in late December to co-opt pagan solstice festivals.
Almost every human society has marked the solstice in some way. The longest night creates a need for a festival or observance with lights to ward off the darkness. Armed with modern science, we know that the days will get longer again. Empirically, our ancestors knew this as well but I always suspect that they also feared that there was the possibility that days would continue to get shorter and they would be stuck in a perpetual darkness. I suspect many early societies had rituals or offerings to the Gods to make sure the days started getting longer again.
Every year on the solstice, I think about the generations came before us and for 1000s of years marked the solstice. The longest night is a connection humanity’s past. We feel the darkness less in the modern world due to electric lighting. But I think it’s worth it to take a minute and imagine how the longest night would have felt to our ancestors a 1000, 2000 or even 5000 years ago with only fire to ward off the darkness and the cold.
I spotted this illuminated roof line while walking to Penn Station one evening after dinner.
On the Way to Penn Station
Only a month out from the winter solstice, the sun especially at more northern latitudes radiates narrow but very warm colored light as it sets. Here it illuminates historic buildings in Brooklyn Heights.
Winter Light on Brick Buidlings
A fire escape on a historic building in Brooklyn Heights