The Green Flash

It didn’t happen tonight. It rarely does. I’ve been looking for it on five oceans. I�m not smart enough to know what the traditional seven seas are. But I can count the ones I have steamed on and looked at the horizon.  but I got it last night. Nailed it. Right here in Petoskey, the town that has what Mark Twain called the Million Dollar Sunsets. They are. It is indisputable. Little Traverse Bay opens to the Big Lake due west, and the sun dissolves on a clear day into a simmering orange cauldron of boiling water with red flames across the clouds on the horizon. Most places you have to have a fancy place on the right shore of Lake Michigan. Here I just have to turn sideways a little, move the chair on the deck.

Twain was here in the ’80s. Not the ones we remember, the ones a century out from those. Mr. Clements needed money, and this place was a burgeoning resort town that wanted entertainment. The people came from the New Towns in the west, Chicago, mostly. Twain came here and saw the sun go down and was kind enough to mention the quality of its demise.

I always love to come back here. Someday I might live here. Last night was something quite extraordinary. If you have looked at sun downs, revered them, you will know what I am talking about. There are other cities, I won’t mention them, that claim they have good views of the death of the day. Those who claim a certain quality to their air and their clouds and the way the light refracts through it all. Hemingway is another guy who thought the Petoskey sunsets were pretty decent. Truth be told, he was a Walloon Lake guy, but did really spent a couple summers right here in town. I know where his favorite bar stool is at the Park Caf�, and if I can�t sit on it when I go there, at least I touch the back of it.

These days, when I am home, I like to look at the sunset right here at the house. And against all hope I found it. The Indian Ocean was the place I looked to the horizon the most. We had nothing else to do, if we were not launching aircraft. We could wander the hangar bay from side to side to find the right vantage even if we were at flight quarters. We were always looking for the Green Flash. It was a thing of legend, that amazing moment when the last portion of the solar disc touched the horizon, that instant when you realize that the dirt on which you stand is actually hurtling through space. The day is long. The sunset is complex. But at the end-game it is so brief that it takes your breath.

In a way it was much easier on an aircraft carrier. There was no cocktail hour there. There was no slow slide into dinner and social activities. Dinner was something that was there if you wanted it, four o�clock on until two hours after flight quarters secured. Whenever. Nobody was going anywhere else. There were no clubs or freedom or the Captain�s table. It was just what we did. Like being in the county slammer with louder noises.

The Green Flash is rare and I do not claim to know what it is. A great wave, just at the moment the sun goes down, focusing the last brilliant dying light through water? A strange prismatic phenomenon? Hell, I don�t know. The legend was large and I had always assumed that there would be some life-changing moment, a flash of radiance that would resonate like a signal from the Green Lantern, a summons from another galaxy to right injustice. Something that would shoot across the sky like a rocket and transmogrify the watcher.

I think I saw something green a couple times, enough to say, �Hey! Wow! Did you see that?�

There was nothing that changed my life in the viewing. There was nothing beyond watching the heavens change through the entire palate of creation, filtered through cloud thick and thin. Bright to subtle dark.  Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo Violet. Roy G. Biv we learned it. To dark. Each night a majesty. Each night a companion to what will come sneaking from the east the next morning.

Last night I was cooking dinner for my folks. Two dinners, actually, since I knew the menu for today and went ahead and parboiled the ribs and slow-cooked them with sauce along with the au gratin Golden potatoes. There was conversation, and the dinner was progressing. My Dad is a little hard of hearing now, so seating is important. He hates to be left out. I saw that the light was getting lower and better outside. We stepped out on the deck. We got to talking again, about city things and family things and whatever. What you talk about on a deck above a lovely bay.

But there came a moment when I looked up and saw that we were a half-disc down on the sunset and Lake Michigan was boiling with crimson passion. I got up and walked to the rail. We were seconds from sundown, and my eyes were glued to the daily cool death of the light of our heaven. I told Mom and Dad it was happening, the water was about to envelop the fire and then there it was.

It was green. It was an emerald. It was brief and it was pure as a stone from the north of Thailand. It was modest and unassuming. But it was the richest and most powerful green I have ever seen.

And then it was gone and the sun was down. Down in the lake, drowned in the fresh water. Radiating its color in steam of green gone red.

Copyright 2002 Vic Socotra