December sunset bicycle ride

At the end of December, before I had my first cataract operation, late one afternoon I took my brother's bicycle out for a ride and a little exercise. The temperature was nice as it was in the mid 30s F. Warm for a North Dakota Christmas. And no wind - what a pleasure.

My mother's house is near the edge of town so it wasn't long before the houses and buildings fell away leaving open space. In the dim light of dusk I saw a large bird fly up from near the ground to light atop a telephone pole at the side of the road. A huge bird silhouetted against the darkening sky. Huge, as I wasn't even close and there was no missing it as it flew. As I passed near and under the pole I looked up to see a very large owl swiveling its head to watch me. So... the large owls on my place in Montana have followed me to North Dakota!

After passing the owl I passed the last of the nearby shelterbelts and the land opened to prairie. The horizon was straight with a slight downward tilt as I turned my gaze along the horizon moving from northwest to the south. I could see across the unseen large river valley over to the land across to the west and southwest. The few buildings and clusters of trees around old farmsteads on my side of the river valley were in silhouette against the darkening sky. The land was in darkness, and it made the few items there was to see, even fewer. The landscape was clean and uncluttered. Uncomplicated. Uncrowded. Pure.

With the empty horizon the whole world seemed available. Beyond the horizon lay ones dreams and the future's promise. Beyond the horizon were people, places, ideas. Everything was possible; all one had to do was travel beyond the horizon to realize their potential.

A half mile down the road was the highway bypass around the city, although "town" feels more comfortable to describe where I was. Compared to other places in North Dakota, Minot is a city. But I have traveled the world and been to what many consider to be cities, with hundreds of thousands, and millions of people. The highway bypass is over a quarter century old, but the town still has not grown out to the bypass. Far different than Rochester, MN where, in less than 5 years after I left, that city grew and encompassed their new bypass.

Few vehicles were on "my" bypass; mainly people coming off the work shift from the air force base to the north and heading home, or heading out to shop at the mall and commercial district that is now on the south edge of town and no longer in the central "downtown" area. Minot seems to have grown in only one direction the past 25 years, and now envelops the mall.

A pickup pulling a long 5th wheel stock trailer came from the oncoming direction, NE. The stock trailer was lit up with many parking lights along its sides. While not Christmas lights, the trailer seemed to be in the Christmas spirit. A diesel roar and a whoosh of air and the pickup and trailer were gone and rapidly moving away behind me. The "whoosh" mixed the air around me and soon I smelled the cargo of the trailer. Or maybe former cargo as it was now too dark to see the trailer's contents. The smell of cattle, manure, and hay. To me, sweet smells... good smells. Smells of animal life. My sense of smell is also better in the dark when my other senses are reduced. Would I have smelled the trailer's smell so vividly during the daylight? Or was I merely missing home and the smell of cattle and hay?

The color of the sky along the long straight horizon made me pause. The sun had already set but I knew precisely where it had gone down. To the SW a deep orange glow remained. During the North Dakota winter the sun no longer sets in the west. I imagined that if I followed the setting sun I would end up in California or Hawaii; some place warm.

As I moved my gaze to the west and northwest, then to the south, the bump of orange settled into a band of orange than thinned closer and closer to the horizon the further I looked from where the sun had set. The orange eventually blended into black and the horizon.

The orange band was not a constant color. The higher from the horizon the paler the orange became until the color was drained away and the sky became a whitish blue, then light blue, then dark blue before yielding into black halfway up from the horizon. Looking up and to the east some stars were making their debut.

As I rode I past a shelterbelt line I could see orange and blue through the trees as I looked back to where the sun had set. Even though the shelterbelt was a half mile away I could see each silhouetted tree in the shelterbelt rows. Thin black trees against a fading orange. This was a shelterbelt from my youth. My memories are of a dense forest, albeit only a half dozen rows thick. A North Dakota forest.

Warm temperatures, no wind, and a rich color palette in the sky... all was well with the world.

What a difference 24 hours make. My bicycle ride the next day brought a foggy grey featureless sky. Damp. No color. A temperature in the upper 20s and a slight breeze - by North Dakotan standards - at 10 mph. I rode north into the wind. I should have worn better gloves as after three and a half miles my hands were cold. I crossed the divided highway to turn my bicycle around. I stopped and stood with my back to the wind, took off my glasses and rubbed the thin layer of ice off their lenses. The world was again to be seen. Cupping my hands and blowing into them I warmed up my fingers and thumbs. Then off to home. I guess days like this are necessary to make me appreciate and savor the beautiful sunset of the prior day.