Painted Sunsets at Palos Verdes

The afternoon was cloudy. Even in the drought, I feared a storm would roll in; the clouds were a hazy grey, almost stippled looking. They covered the evening sun but hues of peach leaked out from behind them.

As the evening got later, the sun slowly dipping lower in the sky, a large, dark, purplish-grey cloud slowly rolled towards the coast. As the sun got lower and lower, the color palette exploded into pale yellows, lavender, pinks, hues of blue, and bright, bold oranges and reds.

I laughed as I rode my lime scooter through the trails of the white point nature preserve, catching peeks of the bright, bloodorange sun from behind the clouds. When I finally sat on the coast, the sun was quickly moving towards the horizon, casting brilliant red light onto my skin. It took my breath away, the sun deepening into a rich magenta, slipping down, down towards the cliffs further down the coast, until it was just a wink of light, kissing my skin one last time before slipping away.

I rode my scooter home in the dark, hair blowing in the wind, laughing like a child, celebrating the beauty around me. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t capture the beauty of the sunset save for in my memory, but it was raw and perfect.