Along the 32nd parallel, in San Diego, where the western march of America’s manifest destiny collides with the Pacific Ocean, the sunsets are always perfect.

The view from the coast here is due west.  It is also south of the Channel Islands.  The setting is completely unobstructed.

Reds, yellows, oranges, purples, and pinks radiate out from the sun as it drops to the waterline.  The colors swirl across the sky and dance and glisten off the glassy water.

We watched the great ball of hydrogen slip beneath the liquid horizon while bobbing just offshore on our surfboard nearly every day for several years that encompassed the mid-1990s.  Staying in the water for sunset was essential.

The old fishermen who casted their lines off the rocks near PB Point spoke of an extremely rare green flash.  If one was lucky, the green flash could be observed just as the sun dips below the waterline.  The Jules Verne novel “Le Rayon-Vert” (The Green Ray), published in 1882, described it as:

“A green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like!  If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope.” Continue reading →