When I am in the US and Walter is here we send each other sunset pictures. It’s cute. Sometimes sunrise as well in the winter when they aren’t so early. In winter, Walter’s pictures pop up on my phone in the early afternoon, and if I send one back it is as he prepares to go to bed, or in the summer in the middle of the night. We send flower pictures as well (although rarely the real thing), but the sunsets are what remind me how much I want to be here. When I am here we look at them together. This summer we also stayed in an amazing house in Cadaqués (on the Costa Brava) and took endless pictures of the sunset over the harbor. I’ll write a post about it at some point. Meanwhile, sunsets in Mouzieys-Panens.
I see the sunrise from my office, and from Andrée’s terrace it illuminates the clouds in the valley that put Cordes in the sky. But our place is the place to see sunsets. We have a long horizon line with multiple viewpoints. You can watch it over the oak stand, the olive grove, and the field so there are many angles and places to stand or sit to watch it gathering itself and fading (it is always better just after you think it is at its peak). The upstairs studio and the attic also offer fabulous views (I enjoy the view over the roof, chimney, and the chinaberry trees in the image to the left).
Moving beyond our house, we can walk past Andrée’s house a little way and then turn off by the trash bins onto a circuit we call the sunset walk because if you time it right you see the sun set over the expanse of fields beyond ours. We can also walk past our house the other way and down the hill toward Belis (for which our road is named). Quite independently, two of our guests last summer who both have a strong artistic streak headed down that hill to see the sunset, and gave me my favorite sunset pictures including the one above. Now that is sunset watching!
Today Walter and I walked around the village just before sunset, watching as the sides of houses turned rich gold and then as the street lights popped on and various solar lanterns in gardens followed. Winter sunsets lack the technicolor of summer or the pastel of Fall, both of which appear in photographs that require a note that they were unfiltered. But after a week of rain with more to come, a sky that is clear enough for a sunset feels more of a gift. And it is also a gift for us to be able to see the same sunset at the same time without the aid of WhatsApp. Tonight it felt good to get out and walk without getting rained on, and it was also good to come home to a warm stove, a welcoming cat, and a shot of a small batch Panamanian rum given to us by Walter’s cousin Mathias.
The light here is amazing. It is always yellow, but as the sun gets low everything turns gold. You’ll see that a lot in the pictures I post here, especially in summer when the sunset stretches longer. Since long before I started coming here, Andrée has almost daily called everyone to the terrace to see Cordes when it turns golden by saying “it is time. Look!” (or “regardez Cordes”) and for a few minutes the whole bastide becomes warm gold and hangs there above the darkening shadows of the vegetation below. Then just as suddenly it becomes gray again and the street and house lights start to pop on.
That same terrace gives us the magical Cordes in the sky sunrises in the spring and fall (and sometimes winter). The view that gave Cordes its name can be seen from the hills all around Cordes, but I admit that I like our view best. When you head down the hill early on market day you drive through and then below that fog and when you look up at Cordes you can hardly see it, just a shadow looming over the market through the fog until the sun burns it off mid-morning.
There’s a name for people who love sunsets — or course, there’s a name for everything — but I didn’t know it. We are called opacarophiles “those who find beauty and joy in sunsets.” Doesn’t everyone? Or does the definition include sending pictures to your loved ones, posting them on social media, and writing a blog post about them? Also running outside to see if there is a sunset you should be photographing? Sunsets are amazing when you think about it. I know they are a phenomenon that science can explain (something to do with the earth’s atmosphere close to the horizon scattering the blue and green short waves and leaving the long, red waves — look it up for yourself). But the really amazing thing is the promise they seem to make about transitions. In most of the world the day doesn’t just switch into night (although it is pretty fast at the equator). Sunset followed by sunrise are markers of the motion of the earth (it is us who is setting and rising after all). A kind of consistency through the changing seasons. Traditionally, they have predicted good weather the next day (“red sky at night, shepherd’s delight”), reminding us again of the cyclical nature of our lives. And they are just so beautiful.
