Desert sunsets.
All color—local, reflected, translucent, complementary—is, of course, made possible by light and has no existence apart from it. Through the long desert day the sunbeams are weaving skeins of color across the sands, along the sides of the canyons, and about the tops of the mountains. They stain the ledges of copper with turquoise, they burn the buttes to a terra-cotta red, they paint the sands with rose and violet, and they key the air to the hue of the opal. The reek of color that splashes the western sky at sunset is but the climax of the sun’s endeavor. If there are clouds stretched across the west the ending is usually one of exceptional brilliancy. The reds are all scarlet, the yellows are like burnished brass, the oranges like shining gold.
But the sky and clouds of the desert are of such unique splendor that they call for a chapter of their own.
CHAPTER VI
DESERT SKY AND CLOUDS
Commonplace things of nature.
The blue sky.
How silently, even swiftly, the days glide by out in the desert, in the waste, in the wilderness! How “the morning and the evening make up the day” and the purple shadow slips in between with a midnight all stars! And how day by day the interest grows in the long overlooked commonplace things of nature! In a few weeks we are studying bushes, bowlders, stones, sand-drifts—things we never thought of looking at in any other country. And after a time we begin to make mental notes on the changes of light, air, clouds, and blue sky. At first we are perhaps bothered about the intensity of the sky, for we have always heard of the “deep blue” that overhangs the desert; and we expect to see it at any and all times. But we discover that it shows itself in its greatest depth only in the morning before sunrise. Then it is a dark blue, bordering upon purple; and for some time after the sun comes up it holds a deep blue tinge. At noon it has passed through a whole gamut of tones and is pale blue, yellowish, lilac-toned, or rosy; in the late afternoon it has changed again to pink or gold or orange; and after twilight and under the moon, warm purples stretch across the whole reach of the firmament from horizon to horizon.
Changes in the blue.
Dawns on the desert.
But the changes in the blue during the day have no constancy to a change. There is no fixed purpose about them. The caprices of light, heat, and dust control the appearances. Sometimes the sky at dawn is as pallid as a snow-drop with pearly grays just emerging from the blue; and again it may be flushed with saffron, rose, and pink. When there are clouds and great heat the effect is often very brilliant. The colors are intense in chrome-yellows, golds, carmines, magentas, malachite-greens—a body of gorgeous hues upheld by enormous side wings of paler tints that encircle the horizon to the north and south, and send waves of color far up the sky to the cool zenith. Such dawns are seldom seen in moist countries, nor are they usual on the desert, except during the hot summer months.