Today started like most days do out here for me. I began the morning at 6am, with a good, long toothbrushing before negating that work by heading out to Black Bear Coffee for some delicious Raven’s Brew drip coffee. I enjoy 2-3 cups of thick black coffee while reading and waking up each morning before catching breakfast at the Employee Dining Room (commonly referred to as “the EDR” acronyms aren’t just for the military). I then head to work at about 8am and begin ‘working’ and gazing up at Mt. Healy, which the warehouse sits in the shadow of.
Today was a bit different, because the weather was amazing (sunny with a high around 60°F) after a week or so of rain and gray. I also had a phone interview with Boise Cascade at noon. The phone interview went well. I will hear back from them in a week or so to see if they want to give me a face-to-face interview.
I clocked out of work at about 4:45pm, ate dinner, and though I was a bit worried about how my knees would feel I headed out into the brightly colored vegetation for a run at around 8:30pm. I was pleasantly surprised by how good my knees felt, no soreness to speak of. My quadriceps were a bit sore as it turned out, but nothing more than minor fatigue from the previous day’s hike. So I continued. This was the best decision I could have made.
I was treated to a very nice sunset over Mt. Healy for the first two miles of my run. The scattered clouds appeared a dark blue, but the edges burned a golden yellow. It was very striking, but it was at about 2.5 miles in to the run that I was blown away. The foothills of the Alaska Range (which are drastically underestimated calling them ‘hills’ as they are quite large) block out a good bit of the sun when it gets low on the horizon; however, where the sun gets through, shining south east, seems to funnel and concentrate the remaining sunlight.
A large section of the southern horizon had big, grey ominous storm clouds, which were lit up the darkest, strongest pink color I had ever seen. Further more, one section of these clouds were raining, diffracting the pink sunlight into three-color bands. The first color band was the largest and shone a vivid red color, while the smaller second and third bands were bright yellow and bright orange. The beauty of this sunset was amazing and was by far the most incredible I have ever seen!
It existed for 5-10 minutes before dimming out as the earth rotated and the Alaska Range shut off the vivid pink light. At mile 3, I turned around to head back home and watched the last bit of sunlight eeking by the north side of Mt. Healy also fall victim to the earth’s rotation.
The last 3 miles of my run continued on tired legs, a brain stirred by the combined probabilities of the natural events that had just occurred, and a heart shaken by the awesome beauty of this place. This display fell in the same direction as where much of my thoughts of late have been, specifically ‘south’. Though there are many places I still hope to see, a little voice deep in the back of my head has begun to whisper, “go home.”
(Naturally I did not have my camera for this event. I don't take it running, but perhaps in the future I will take it)
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