When I think about the most beautiful sunset I‘ve ever seen, I think of this one. I took this photo in August of 2020 at our rental cottage on the Lake Huron shores. That was the summer of reprieve for me and my family, when we were able to spend a week at the lake and not think about all of the bad things that were happening everywhere else. The reason we love cottaging so much, that.
Although it was just a few years ago, my children seemed so much younger then; still kids, not yet tweens. They would spend hours skipping rocks and playing in the sand. Their dad and I were the centre of their worlds. As we walked along the beach that evening, these blazing colours slowly seeped across the giant sky, the flat, empty horizon stretching both ways as far as we could see. The kids were running ahead, playing in the waves that brushed the shore, their giggles and games charming all of the cottagers we passed along the way. I remember thinking, This is as happy as I can ever be.
I began my career in the editorial department at this magazine as a fact checker. One day, an assignment about sunsets hit my desk. It included the claim, long-repeated to me before and since, that Lake Huron sunsets were at the head of a top 10 list published by none other than National Geographic magazine. I had to prove this claim true. So I called that venerable publication and talked to probably five or six different people, each one with more seniority than the last. None of them had ever heard about Lake Huron sunsets. They told me they never published such a list about sunsets at all.
I still meet Lake Huron cottagers who talk about this mythical list, each one emitting pride that glows like the big event itself. I just smile and try to reflect that light back. How can I not? I saw this sunset in 2020.
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