The living sunset.

Looking back at the years of my early youth, pre-puberty that is, I find that it was all like a remarkable dream. The countdown to Christmas, the simple joy of a birthday morning and the endless and free summers being such highlights of the year. Now they seem to just pass with the wind with no effect on me.

Out of all my childhood memories, the summers are my favourite, for they were not just for a day or a few hours but weeks of non-stop joy and excitement. The exploration, the absolute delight of leaving school for the holidays and the relentless energy we had as children. All of it made pure magic.

I remember as a child finding the utmost joy in long summer fields of hay and wheat. A world of endless grass and heat, golden and wavy. Like an ocean of green and yellow, rolling around before me until they dissolved into the sky. All alongside the soft sound of crickets, birds and rustling leaves.

It was always felt to me that at the point of the day whereby the sun began to become a wink on the horizon, that was when it was meant to begin. That sunset should have been sunrise. Because for me as a child of eight, nine, ten or eleven, the beauty that nature had at this peculiar time affected me. Where afternoon and evening swapped shifts, the way the sky changed colours constantly, it was as if the world was at this point alive and breathing. I thought that the sun was not created to be above us, glaring down on us like a grumpy teacher or parent, but alongside us, with us. That the heat it gave off at this time settled over us, like a blanket put on a baby by a mother. It was comforting and calming, still and silent. Not harsh and glaring as it had been throughout the day.

The living sunset.

So looking back at the age of twenty, my childhood has the sunset of midsummer to thank, for its painting of the clouds in pink and the land it set before me. The land that I tried to find the end of but never did.