The Flash of Green
Sometimes we become so focused on a far-off dream that we can’t see the beautiful things and meaningful events all around us.
When I was growing up, my family spent a week at the beach each summer. My grandparents owned a trailer lot and a boat in Ocean City, Maryland, off the Isle of Wight Bay, and we stayed with them. We fit four adults and three kids in a one-bedroom trailer, and yet it didn’t feel cramped or crowded. At least, not to us kids. My parents and grandparents might have felt differently.
Many of my favorite family memories come from those vacations. Fishing for flounder; walking and biking the boardwalk; collecting shells and digging for sand crabs at the beach; playing Hearts and Rummy in the evenings or on rainy days; watching Orioles games on a small black-and-white TV while we ate on foldout trays. There was the time we watched 4th of July fireworks on a blanket in the sand. The time I caught “three fish and a fishing pole with just one minnow!” as my grandfather exclaimed. The time my baby brother took his very first steps, right inside that trailer, with all of us as witnesses.
Ocean City, mid-1970s
One summer, probably when I was in my early teens, I read about a phenomenon called the “green flash” that could sometimes be seen at sunrise over the water. The article said that, with the right atmospherics and viewing conditions, a brilliant flash of green could be seen for just a split second right before the sun breaks the horizontal plane. Flash-of-green sightings were fairly rare, as you had to be looking at just the right spot at just the right time; therefore, seeing one was said to bring good luck.
With me being me, even way back then, I insisted on getting up before sunrise one morning and walking to the beach (a few blocks away) to watch for the green flash. I have never been a morning person—that is a huge understatement!—so the fact that I was willingly getting up at o-dark-thirty and then walking a few blocks in the dark, to boot, tells you how badly I wanted to see this magical flash. I know that my mom came along, but I don’t think anyone else did. She probably lost the coin toss with my dad when they realized I was serious.
So off we went before dawn one morning, yawning as we trudged to the boardwalk. There weren’t very many other people there, other than a few diehard joggers on the boardwalk and the beachcomber vehicles smoothing out the sand, their headlights still on. We found what we thought would be a good viewing spot on a bench, and waited for the magical moment.
But it never came. There was no green flash to be seen that morning. I got a single, hazy picture of the ocean on my Kodak Instamatic. We lingered for a few minutes until the sun had totally broken free of the distant waterline and began its ascent. As it rose, my spirits dropped, disappointed that the moment I’d anticipated for weeks had not transpired.
Jekyll Island, 2012
I saw a few more sunrises over the ocean in subsequent years, but usually from afar, or with limited views, or on hazy days, or well after that first and crucial breakthrough moment. It was disappointing. Then in 2012, another green-flash opportunity presented itself. I was driving to Florida with a good friend, and we made an overnight stop at Jekyll Island, Georgia. Neither of us had heard of Jekyll Island; we had seen a billboard for it right as driving fatigue was beginning to set in, so we went there on a whim—and were immediately captivated by the place’s beauty. We arrived there right as the sun was setting, in a hundred brilliant shades of orange and yellow and red, framed by the dark silhouettes of palm trees along the street side of the impossibly white, clean beach that rings the island. It was offseason, so we booked a room with no problem. We also scored oceanview seats for dinner at a seafood restaurant, where we were treated to another spectacular show of nature: a full moon rising over the ocean.
We decided to get an early start the next morning, and I proposed trying to catch the sunrise from the east side of the island. She agreed, and so we set our alarms after googling “sunrise times Jekyll Island.” (Another on-a-whim move, but it works! Try it!) About 20 minutes before dawn, barely awake and wearing our morning faces (translation: no makeup, and glasses instead of contacts), we drove to a beachside parking lot and then settled onto a bench in the sand. There were already a few people walking or jogging along the water, despite the deep blue darkness of the sky. I readied my camera and my iPhone, and we watched the horizon as the deep blue started to change into a lighter blue, then a blue-gray, then took on a hint of pinkish gray, which soon became a bright rose-colored hue that spread upwardly as it ushered in a HUGE orange ball of light that was the sun. Glorious. Breathtaking. Well worth the extra 30 to 45 minutes of sleep that we’d given up to experience it.
But, alas. Neither of us, and none of our combined three camera lenses, caught sight of the elusive green flash.
Cape May, 2014
My most recent ocean sunrise was in October of this past year. My husband and I were in New Jersey to take part in the annual Lighthouse Challenge there, something I had wanted to do for years. I had carefully mapped out a route and a plan, so that we could visit as many of the 14 open lighthouses as possible. (We made it to 11. Not bad for old people.) Knowing that we’d have to hit the first lighthouse, at Cape May, as soon as it opened at 8:00 a.m., I booked a beachside hotel room there for the night before. It was a third-floor room that opened onto a shared Southern-style porch, with rocking chairs and a great view of the beach and ocean across the street.
We got up early enough to allow time for breakfast at a restaurant, which meant that it was still dark as we packed our luggage into the car. While making a final check of the room, I walked onto the porch and noticed that the sky was undergoing a color change pattern just like I’d seen at Jekyll Island. I decided to try to get a few good photos.
I will never forget the visual splendor of that sunrise. From our perch above the horizon’s sightline, we saw an amazing optical effect. The best way to describe it is this: think of a very bright, yellow-white light captured inside an old-fashioned, drawer-style matchbox; then imagine that light bursting outward and upward in a rapidly widening slot as the matchbox drawer slides to the right. The initial burst seemed to light up the entire sky—almost like sheet lightning does in a summer storm, but much brighter and in shades of orange and red, rather than blue and green. Then a colorful rippling effect began as the upper edge of the orb broke the plane, its curvature clearly defined as it rose fairly quickly into the sky.
As I zoomed in for closer shots, I saw the silhouettes of a family outlined against the sun. I had noticed them earlier. Unlike everyone else on the beach that morning, they weren’t walking along the edge of the water or collecting shells. They were very still, standing close to each other but not touching, looking into the distance and awaiting the sun’s arrival. Shortly after the sunrise began, I saw that they had huddled closer together and were sharing a prolonged group hug. From their body language, I got the impression that it was a hug of comfort or condolence. Perhaps they had recently lost someone close to them. Maybe they were there to honor the memory of someone lost long ago. Or maybe there had been no loss at all; maybe they were just on vacation and were making their own memories, as my family had done over the years, all those years ago. Maybe they were just taking some time, as a family, to be still and drink it all in. No taking selfies or updating Facebook or framing the scene for Instagram…just living in that moment.
I took several shots of the rising sun, but I also followed the lead of that family—I put the camera down a few times to breathe deeply, scan the colorful horizon, inhale the panoramic beauty that surrounded me, capture it with just my senses. And I’m glad I did. Frankly, the photographs aren’t all that great—I was standing hundreds of yards from the beach, on a balcony on a chilly morning, without a tripod. The unfiltered, unframed version in my mind is much clearer. Because while photography allows us to capture, and later reminisce on, some of life’s grandest moments, constraining the live picture within a viewfinder or a digital screen can sometimes prevent us from experiencing those moments to their fullest while we’re still in them.
A Flash of Realization
You’re probably wondering whether I saw the green flash during that memorable Cape May sunrise. The answer is no, I didn’t, and none of the pictures contained any hint of green. But you know what? It didn’t really matter. Because as I stood there, mesmerized and excited by the light show going on in the sky all around me, and touched by the poignancy of that silhouetted family, I realized that I had barely even given a thought to the green flash. I can’t imagine that a momentary sighting of a small patch of green would have been any more exciting or satisfying than the fabulous array of rippling colors that I had just witnessed.
Thinking back to the early morning disappointments I’d experienced over the years, I realized that by focusing on that little flash of green, I had missed out on some gorgeous shades of orange, yellow, and red. Dwelling on what wasn’t there had prevented me from appreciating what was there: The triumphant dawning of a new day, bursting forth in technicolor to declare a return from darkness. Another chance. A fresh start. A new hope, wish, or dream.
Since then, I have made it a habit to take a minute or two each morning, just after waking, to be still and look at the sky. Some days I see the sun rising; some days it’s already risen by the time I open my eyes. I look out the window, appreciate the beauty of whatever color the sky happens to be, and give thanks for the precious gifts awaiting me that day. Friendship, support, encouragement, love, acceptance…these are the sunrise colors surrounding us that we too often ignore, or don’t even notice, in pursuit of a fleeting green flash of light.
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For some “behind-the-scenes” extras, including the story behind the fishing triumph and a gallery of sunrise and sunset photos, read “Behind the Green Flash” within this same collection (In the Moment).
