Laurie Boden
Nov 3 · 6 min read

Sunset on the Overlook…..

As usual, I am the only person on the overlook. The apartment complex of which it is part, looms up five floors on three sides. Nestled between these buildings is a park and though it’s situated above a garage, cherry and magnolia trees line the concrete walkways. Lights set into the retaining walls that hold well tended grass, shrubbery and flowering plants, glow softly at dusk.Water spills from a fountain near the gates, roofed by a Japanese style trellis laden with fragrant wisteria. The huge grape like clusters hand heavily down and the thick green canopy provides shelter for song birds in spring, summer, and into winter.

Walkways meander about the buildings and culminate at the overlook, a broad space that provides a panorama of the mountains and small town below this apartment building on the hill. Benches strewn along the way are decorated with painted vines, and on the overlook perches another trellis hung with purple wisteria. The place is bordered by an ornate, stainless steel fence created by a local artist some time ago. A bench beneath provides the perfect place to view rolling hills in the distance, the Cascades punctuating the skyline. On clear day there is vast blue sky dotted with meandering puffy clouds and the cry of seagull and crow in the near distance. They complain and wheel and dip above the squat shopping center, restaurants and shops below. Pines shoot up nearly as high as the buildings, ancient wonders that have stood for hundreds of years, their trunks deeply lined with the wrinkles of time, their branches filled with chittering and busy yellow finches, robins and the occasional complaining blue jay.

In a busy world that takes so much and gives so little back, other than the ability to maintain anonymity in such a maelstrom of self adoration, achieving and spending, here is shelter from the storm. It is a place of peace, somewhere one can sit and search their soul, contemplate things past, present and future.

In the courtyard near the front office, one can daily hear the laughter of children, the voices of those passing one another by and not stopping for long, never for long. There are the delivery trucks with incessant and annoying beeping as they back into the drive during business hours. The construction site adds to the symphony of clamor and discord as the workers go about industtiously creating more living and office spaces. After five or so years, the sound sits comfortably amidst the ordinary noise of daily living. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, there is the lawn care for the building here or across the way and on those mornings, the quiet is broken early by leaf blowers, weed whippers, until around noon. Fumes from the site and the gasoline powered blowers wafts into the window so that fresh air becomes a commodity much appreciated once the working day is done.

There are no balconies, no small yard in which to tend to peace or dig in the dirt. But there is a view that teases those simple things. Fortunate to have a place that does not look over the courtyard and into someone else’s window, this small home is five stories up and the view from the window overlooks a forest of pine and low shrubs atop a rock wall. Closer inspection reveals that there is a building beyond in the parking lot across the way. Over the years the pines have grown at the border between complexes and the view from the huge window in the living room and bedroom, with a little imagination, looks out and over a forest. Sometimes you can close your eyes and hear the birds in the morning, the wind sighing through the pines. On such days, it’s easy to imagine being in a place far away from the busy…until morning traffic begins with the advent of swishing tires and engines of car and truck and bus.

None of this interferes with the quiet on the overlook, saving for the hum and whoosh of cars on the near distant road below.

Then there are the sunsets.

I can see the sunrise from my window, but not as clearly as I once did. Once the view of the horizon was mostly clear, and I would wake to the soft light of approaching morning, the trees set into bas relief against the deep blue sky. Pink, then gold, the sun would tint the sky. Now that vista is blocked by the pines that now dwarf this building, and there is only a hint of sunrise rose filtering between the branches.

But on the overlook the sun takes center stage as it descends beyond the back-lit Cascades, behind Bellevue and in the far distance, Seattle. The entire skyline transforms, fiery red and yellow that fades gradually to pink and gold then purple before fading into the darkening sky of night. The clouds catch fire, bright red bellies simmering into dusty mauve, wisps of smoky strands visible above the far mountains. It’s a show that’s free, that comes every night, breathtaking and beautiful, one that reminds us that the world is so much more than the busy and industrious doings of man.

Yet most times that I go there in the day or at sunset, there is no one else on the benches. They are all locked inside their cubicles, blinds tightly drawn against intruding eyes, dim lights visible behind the blinds. No one is interested, no one wants or bothers to take a moment for retrospection, introspection, or even to just admire the show. They are enraptured by the TV, the internet, entranced by their own image reflected back at them in devices and sent onto others for approval. They are often not caught up in family things, but artificial life.

I often wonder how natural beauty can be so underestimated and ignored. These performances put on by nature are some of the most amazing things, and never are repeated in the same way twice. Like a child, dumb to the machinations of the worldly world, I sit on that bench and stare in awe at the colors painted across the sky, the sound of settling birds providing the music, the silence of oncoming night when most of the cars and busy noises of the day have settled down and disappeared.

Alone I find peace after a long life of busy searching for myself. Who I am, where I’m going, who sees me and who does not, none of that matters as I sit on the overlook and immerse my soul in the beauty around me. It’s an experience that diminishes you and also brings new life into spirit, at once making you know that your worldly worth is not so important in the greater scheme of things, that everything passes and everything goes back to whence it came. The endless cycle of time will be repeated whether we are here to see it’s beauty and it’s ugliness and it’s indifference, despite humankind’s efforts to stall it, negate it, explain it.

We are specks of dust in a vast universe that moves on whether we like it or not.

I believe that seeing what one can’t change, looking into the mirror of our soul, is a frightening experience and so we just look away. We hold up what we can explain, bury ourselves in technology we can define and control, instead of seeing that no natter how far we go, we’ll never out distance time and space and we are not infinite. We are part of the universe. From it we came and back to it, we’ll definitely go.

Looking at the vastness of it, the rose colored sky, the sinking sun, the endless ocean that spreads far beyond the horizon, the star strewn night, strikes an awe inspiring fear into us, that knowing that we are not omnipotent. We are not gods, and everyone meets an end. We do not know if there is a beginning after that end, but we do know there is an end. There is that final sleep from which we will not waken — at least not on this side of the veil.

So I sit alone and watch the show, and wait to be absorbed one day, the finite into the infinite, and revel in the beauty of it all.
The sunset is amazing from the overlook.

You should take a look some time at the greater picture of what life’s about.

Sometimes just a little quiet time bathing in the all encompassing universe around us will put all in perspective.

Laurie Boden

Written by

Who am I? Still up for debate. The air in Seattle is rare indeed. Don’t want to read me? No problemo. I’ll write anyway. Views on life, stories conjured, cast.

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