At the bank today, while arranging another international wire for my next trip to South Africa, I found myself sharing stories with the same representative who helped me before — and a new employee being trained. Our conversation wandered, as good ones do: from wildlife and people to the kind of unexpected details that stay with you long after the trip ends.

We ended up talking about sunsets.
Everyone says Africa has the most spectacular ones — those skies that set the world on fire. I’d read about them, seen the photographs, waited for them. But in person? I’ll admit, I was underwhelmed. Maybe it was the wrong season, or maybe I’d already witnessed enough dramatic light from the wildfire skies here in Washington to be harder to impress.

It sent me spiraling back to the 1970s, when I was a teenager living about thirty miles south of Seattle. We had just earned our driver’s licenses — that first taste of freedom — and loved the idea of heading to “the big city.” But before we went, we’d always glance north to see if Seattle was wearing its “smog hat.” If it was, the trip was off. Most days, it was. So we stayed home and found our own kind of mischief.

Maybe my next South Africa trip will change my mind about those famous sunsets. But it also made me realize something about writing. I’m taking the literal sun out of my books — or at least stepping it back — and focusing instead on the emotions that live within those moments. The weight of quiet, the in-between light, the pulse of what’s shifting inside us as one day folds into another.

Because the real beauty of a sunrise or sunset isn’t in the color — it’s in what it awakens.

Excerpt from a writer between worlds — Africa, memory, and meaning.