Sundowns come early now for us on the watery edge of the eastern time zone. When they come to a meadow, the sun sometimes reaches a golden arm out and languorously embraces the field before departing.
There also can be a playful, hide-and-seek aspect to the sun going down behind a spruce and balsam fir woods:
Just before it departs, the sun often performs a visual drum roll and is gone, leaving behind a short-lived afterglow to ease us into night.
Sometimes, as night’s blackness is just arriving, the clear, cold winter air wafts in off the ocean and seems to mix with the dwindling warm light, giving it a salty, intoxicating tang that makes you wish you could drink the day’s end down before it goes away. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 10 and 22, 2025.)