I don’t very often get to sit down and watch a whole sunset. Last night I did. I saw the first blaze of yellow-orange and pulled up a lawn chair and sat there with my camera until the last pink faded to blue-gray.

There was a spot so beautiful that at first I thought it would be a spectacular sunset. The clouds were very interesting, but as sunsets go it was simply pretty. And I figured out something about what makes a sunset dramatic that I had never noticed before.

Now it seems so obvious, but here it is. To have gorgeous color all over the sky, you have to be near enough the edge of the cloud bank—or have enough breaks in the clouds—that the clouds over you are not in shadow.

I rested and watched a pretty sunset where I was. I watched a fabulous sunset . . . for those ten or fifteen miles to my west. I hope someone there saw it and enjoyed it as much as I did.