I have a friend of more than 50 years whose life has been similar to mine, yet very different. We are the same age, born only one day apart. He, too, has lived his career as a Christian minister. We retired at the same time, both of us celebrating our last day in the pulpit on the same day. There are, however, differences. Although we both grew up in Montana, his life has led him to retirement in Maine and mine to Washington. We both live fairly near the ocean, but his is a different ocean. I live a bit closer to Canada than he, but we both have spent our careers in northern states.

I have another friend who is a different age than I, who has a home on the beach in Florida. And I have a fourth friend who has lived in San Diego for many years. Thinking of those particular friends, we sort of have the four corners of the continental United States covered. I also have a friend who has purchased property on Oahu in Hawaii, which is almost, but not quite as far west as you can go in this country.

I’ve been thinking about how place affects our perspective on the world. My friends in Maine and Florida, for example experience sunrise three hours before it peeks above the horizon here. And when we are watching the sunset here they are crawling into bed in the dark. That isn’t as big a difference as my friends in Australia where it is spring as we experience late fall. Where you are on the globe affects how you view the world.

I’ve been a morning person all of my life. I like to rise early and when evening comes, I head to bed before others. One of the treasures of my memories are countless images of the sunrise. I love rising in the dark and going to a body of water to launch a canoe and watch the sunrise from the surface of the water. My friend who lives in Maine, on the other hand, is an evening person. When we were college students he often worked late into the night while I was sleeping and then slept late into the morning while I was working. You’d think from those personality traits that he might have ended up on the west coast and I on the east, but that’s not the way it turned out.

Last night we took a walk on the beach. It was near high tide and the bay, which sometimes is very calm, had a little surf, so that the rhythm of the waves provided a beautiful soundtrack for our walk. The rains left us yesterday and we had a clear evening with no clouds in the sky. The seagulls were settling for the night and their usual raucous chorus had ebbed for the day. A few lone birds were walking along the shore, but many had found roosts for the night. There was a row of them, all facing away from the sea, on the roof of a park building near the shore. The pacific northwest is home to some very large trees and the logs and tree roots that have washed up on the beach are huge and make interesting shapes in the fading sunlight. It was a time to enjoy the beauty of the evening and reflect on the activities of the day.

Somehow it seems right that as I reach this stage of my life I have ended up on the sunset coast. The sun rises slowly here, leaving us in the shadow of the Cascade mountains for a while each morning. We can have beautiful and dramatic sunrises here. the mountains provide a unique backdrop. But this is a place of sunsets. We are far enough north that the days are short at this time of the year, so we get to experience both. We rise in the dark and go to bed in the dark during the winter. In the summer, our days are so long that you learn to sleep when it is light out.

People often compare the seasons of life to the seasons of the year. If you follow that analogy, I guess I’m in about the same season in both right now. It is late fall. Winter is just around the corner. If spring is the season of birth, then I’m much closer to winter these days. That analogy doesn’t really work for me, in part because I have always enjoyed winter and I don’t associate winter with death at all. It is a time of experiencing the intensity of life. If you dip in a hot springs, climb out and roll in the snow then return to the warm water you’ll feel very alive indeed.

Sunrise and sunset, however, do seem to give some perspective on the different phases of life. Again, I don’t completely associate darkness with death, so the analogy is not complete. All analogies fail at some point. Still, it seems to be appropriate to pay a bit more attention to sunsets as I figure out how to live into retirement. I know I have a bit more time to walk on the beach than our son who is at a very busy phase of an active career. By the time he is done with work and the family has had dinner and the chickens are in their coop and the kids are in the pajamas and settled into bed it is well past dark each night. Time to take a walk on the beach, let alone time to enjoy a sunset, is a rare opportunity for him.

I still have a very busy life. There are lots of things to do. I have a schedule of my days and get to the end of my days tired and ready for rest. Still, there are a few more opportunities for walking and reflecting and observing life than was the case at some other phases of my life.

It seems good to be collecting images and memories of sunsets.