Search for the Green Flash

The famous but seldom seen "green flash" or "emerald flash" which occurs just before the last part of the sun disappears from view at sunset is caused by the same atmospheric refraction and scattering effects which produce the red sunset. If you go to redsun, the scientific terms are explained. But let me tell you about my own search for the green flash. I am fortunate to live two blocks from the Redondo Beach Pier in Southern California and I have watched countless sunsets hoping and praying to see the mythical green flash. I was told once, long ago, as I held hands with a honest-to-God physicist while watching a sunset, about the scientific proof of the green flash. I had always thought that flash was a very, very rare thing--like seeing a shooting star or an eclipse of the sun. In the midst of his textbook explanation of the flash, I signed and said, "Ah, science and spirituality. To you it means refraction; to me, if I ever see one, it will be like wishing on the first star I see at night, or making a wish on a load of hay on a flatbed truck as you speed past it in your sportscar somewhere in the midwest without looking back." He laughed, but being a believing man himself, he said my right-brained wish theory and science could co-exist.

Only once in my life have I seen a green flash, long after the physicist and I had parted ways. I have watched for green flashes everywhere I've traveled--and right here at home. It was before the age of digital cameras, but I was standing on the Redondo Beach Pier watching the fishermen and their families angling for dinner when I did see one. The sun was picking up speed in its quest to fall into the sea. I intently put my chin on the guard rail at the very end of the pier and watched the sun drop and flatten, lighting the sky in reds and mauves and cutting a path of maroon and pink across the bay. And it was there--the green flash, a momentary thing. It took my breath away; I looked around to see if anyone else had seen it, but no one was doing or saying anything differently.

Human beings tend to take beauty for granted, especially when they live in the midst of it. I am guilty of that. When I moved here 14 years ago, I was watching sunsets almost daily and now I go down to the sea only a few times a month--though I do drive by the ocean to and from work. This photo was taken in a series two days ago, hoping I would digitally capture the green flash. I didn't, but in examining this photo in PhotoShop, along with several others of the Santa Monica Mountains and the cliffs at Palos Verdes, my breath was again taken away. Here I am--searching for "something special" to remind me of God, like the green flash. Instead, God jumped out as I observed the thumbnails--I saw a runner on the sand, a series of surfers bobbing on the waves, the winter tight life guard house, a flock of seagulls on the shore, my dog Cookie silhouetted against the dark gray sea, three seals leaping and jumping in the surf--and a bunch of other people watching the sun set waiting for their own green flashes. Because I have taken time to write about this today and to meditate on the frames I caught in my camera, I feel absolutely breathless with gratefulness to be alive and to be aware. Sometimes I just need to be reminded that green flashes are everywhere, not just at rare times.