May 17, 2012. We get to spend our 32nd anniversary on the island. Mojitos on the deck watching the sun shimmer out of the clouds and set full and red. It’s north of the lighthouse now. Official sunset time: 8:01. Official reservation time at the Spring House: 8:15. Great location, great drinks, great sunset, great meal.
Happy anniversary, Dan, my partner, my friend, my love!
After four months, we’re back on the island again. This is always a wonderful occasion. We regretted not bringing champagne to celebrate–but a surprise fireworks display at 1:15am more than made up for that.
God, meanwhile, or celestial mechanics, was providing our normal and much loved fireworks.
After sunset, the sky continued blazing red for some time.
The full moon rose so bright that we could see colors by moonlight.
We arrived at the house on Block Island on Thursday. The weather is sunny and so clear that America looks to be a mile or two away–not twelve. The wind is calm. Daffodils are out all over the island. There’s not a lot of activity in town, and where we live up at the end of Corn Neck Road, there’s hardly any. We’re the only ones here. Us, and all this ocean. It’s wonderful.
Last night we were awakened by a kind of thudding, and the windows rattled. The light from the lighthouse, which intemittently casts the windowframe in sharp relief against the opposite wall of the bedroom, seemed to be jumping around. “What’s that?” I asked Dan. Hailstorm? Earthquake? Armageddon?
“Fireworks,” he said.
I jumped up and looked out.
Fireworks. Glorious full-color fireworks in the sky over Sachem Pond.
It was 1:15 in the morning, and no one living on this end of the island but us.
Goodbye, Block Island, beautiful even on a winter’s morning!
Be safe! We’ll see you again in the spring.
Moonrise this evening, about 7pm at the State Beach. The wind was strong; sand flew in our faces; and the clouds raced at breakneck speed. The moon alone seemed to keep the world from blowing apart.
A clear-sky sunset has an undeniable Apollonian beauty, but I think I prefer the unsettled, moody sunsets amid turbulent clouds.
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain…
The storm moved onto the island a little before noon today. It’s blowing and pouring, battering at windows and roof. The US Weather Service is predicting sixty-mile-per-hour gusts. All the ferries today are canceled. We are snug inside and enjoying the show. But it does seem appropriate to post last night’s breathtaking sunset, unsettled and intimating a change in the weather.
5:40 pm
5:50pm
October 16, 2011. Sometime between when we left the house and when we lined up at the ferry terminal, this unlikely cloud formation appeared in the sky, lit from below by the setting sun. It seemed to forebode a serious change in the weather, but instead vanished within minutes, leaving no trace.
These days the sun is setting pretty far toward the south end of Sachem Pond. Last night the sun ducked behind some clouds just before setting. No sharp red sun against the dunes, but it lit up the sky.
Monday, September 26, 2011 was a warm, sunny day on the island. But as the sun tilted down toward the west, the fog rolled in. It was thick on the north end of the island, surrounded by ocean as we are, but the sun peered wanly through the fog as it set over Great Salt Pond.
