Cape Cod Bay - Cold Sunset

Late afternoon, while looking out my back window, I became aware of a few bands of long grey clouds that had materialized in the western sky. There was barely any wind and they were stacked up loosely, with bright yellow-white sunlight shining between them on their lower ranks. It was 4:00, and the sun would set at 4:30. Since I have tall trees that block my entire view of any horizon, I hurried off to the beach to see if there was going to be a show. Well... there was.

I walked out onto the foam-ice-covered beach to watch the show. Starting at about 4:15 the grey slowly gave way; cloud-edge by cloud-edge, to light pinks and fuschias. And then at 4:30 as the sun must have hit the horizon, the whole sky exploded with deep purples, reds, yellows and oranges. The photo here doesn't even show how brilliant it was.

It was barely 20 degrees out though, and at some point just after this photo, I realized I couldn't feel the shutter button under the bony peg that had once been my right index finger. In fact, ALL my fingers... in both hands... were pegs - additionally they didn't work any more. I couldn't even depress the shutter. I realized they HURT too... numb and painful at the same time. It's a deep frozen hurt, and a hurt that I knew would get worse as my fingers warmed up. So, deliberately, but reluctantly, as the colors faded, I slogged back to my car to try to thaw out. And yeah... they hurt worse as they thawed. Even so... it was worth it. Next time... better gloves. The fingerless-es just don't cut it at 20 degrees. (click photo for a bigger view)