The story of how a single sunset may get a person through an entire winter

Today was a perfect fall day. The kind where you need a sweatshirt, but the sun is warm. The sky was perfectly clear and blue and I couldn’t help but be out in it.  Then again, a lot of that is because I know exactly what this means: tomorrow, we freeze.

That is always how the fall days go here. They are perfect, they are warm, they are brief. And instead of a gentle shove into the next season, instead of a day or two of transition, the following day is just plain cold. We all complain about it, even the people that like the snow. Even the people that consider winter their playground. It simply hits too fast and too hard and if you’re not holding on [to a ticket to the tropics] that day will take you out.

Tomorrow, in all likelihood, will be that day. Not because it will be the coldest day of the year, not because we don’t know it’s coming. It’s that today was overly nice. So nice that if you didn’t know Colorado fall better, you’d think she were being fake, telling you she liked your hair and the way it shines in the afternoon sun when really, it is a trap. A trap I fall for every year.

One of the best things about having gone through this year after year, though, is experience. There are tools to get you through, tools that range from the simple to the outright panic. There are people that feel like winter is good for them, restful, restorative.  I am not one of them.  I need reminders that it’s temporary. I need reminders that just because it’s cold and icy and windy and cruel it does not mean I need to refuse to function in every day life. I need help.

I like to start with the simple.  Like this Santa Fe sunset:

It starts with the sun just beginning to graze the horizon, illuminating everything it touches in a soft golden glow.

Soon, though, it hits that horizon and as if a switch has been flipped, that soft golden glow turns dark.

That golden ball sinks into the orange horizon, and for these few, fleeting moments, you have clear and total evidence that, yes, this Earth is turning.

It’s sort of sad but at the same time comforting to see your day end in only the best way possible, knowing you got through the entire thing, somehow.

It was like any other day, or it was all it’s own, and yet you said hello and goodbye to it— even if you didn’t realize it at the time.

You watch that sun set for you, just as it rose for you, and maybe you catch yourself wondering what it will bring tomorrow.

And just as you’re staring at that last bit, you breathe in and feel like you need to hang on just for a minute more. It’s there, just barely, winking at you and reminding to take this moment in.

Just as that last bit of light shines, just as you think it’s over, the sky gets a little brighter  to let you know it’ll be back soon.

Because that’s the way it is.

So you think to yourself that maybe if you’re lucky, and if you’re smart, you’ll get up again too.