The bus had been sit­ting by a house in Irē all those weeks, and I nev­er thought it was actu­al­ly road­wor­thy. It was the final night of the Livo­ni­an camp and I was going with all the kids and teach­ers to Īra beach for a final night togeth­er. Min­utes after this pic­ture was tak­en, we made a sud­den turn onto a road even less suit­ed for a bus. A nar­row forest path that I guessed was the new road I’d heard so much about. We bumped and rocked over tree roots and branch­es, the bus some­times tilt­ing at obscene angles. But we were all laugh­ing because it seemed impos­si­ble that any­thing tru­ly bad could even hap­pen. Before reach­ing the beach, we encoun­tered a car head­ing the oth­er direc­tion on the new road. We must have appeared like some myth­i­cal forest beast sud­den­ly burst­ing from the dark depths, our engi­nes bel­low­ing a fright­en­ing cry, and our head­lights shin­ing like twin demons in the night. The look on the oth­er driver’s face was unfor­get­table.

The bus dropped us off and they start­ed to build a camp­fire. Some of us walked across the dunes to see the ocean and the sun­set.

I climbed over the dunes and saw the ocean stretch­ing out before me. Some­where on the oth­er side was Swe­den, but there was no way to tell. The whole world was noth­ing but water, sand, and light.

I walked out onto the beach and it was like being inside light. Every­thing was pink, the col­or of the clouds and sky.

Look­ing South­west, the sea, sand, and sky came togeth­er with the famil­iar coast pines.

Light catch­ing the break­ing waves, as the sun sinks into the Baltic Sea. Max­field Par­rish clouds drift above.

As the observer, I want­ed to know what it was like to be the observed. So, I turned the cam­era on myself and watched as I became just anoth­er object played upon by the evening light.

The clouds hung above and looked as if they were out­lin­ing the shape of the forests, the water, and the sand. A two-dimen­sion­al slice of a three-dimen­sion­al world. The moon sat silent­ly above, adding just enough to keep the rest of the sky from seem­ing emp­ty.

The sun sank deep­er into the ocean. Its reflec­tion a gold­en path run­ning straight to me across the waters.

Look­ing north, up the coast towards Kūolka. A few foot­steps broke the uni­for­mi­ty of the sand and dunes, lit­tle mounds of sand behind the beach scrub the only evi­dence of the con­stant wind.

The sun was almost gone, the beach world no longer appeared pink and lumi­nous. Yet the sun still glowed molten. It seemed the cen­ter point of activ­i­ty, bal­anced by the clouds drift­ing across the quick­ly dark­en­ing skies, and the calm waters of the sea.

The sun was dis­ap­pear­ing into a cloud bank. Water above and water below had gone from the bril­liant col­or of day to the slate grey of the approach­ing night.

The last limb of the sun dis­ap­pears into a cloud bank as it dips below the hori­zon.

The sun had set and now only its final glow per­me­at­ed the sky. The light of the moon had begun to assert itself, and soon only it and the stars would light our way back to camp. Even in the grow­ing dark­ness, it seemed the world around us and the world above us had remained the same col­or. The reced­ing tide had cre­at­ed a per­fect mir­ror to the sky. Two lit­tle girls from camp reached down to touch its face.

They say the sun pow­ers the atmos­phere, ener­giz­ing the winds and water, giv­ing them life. Look­ing up at the­se clouds that night, I could feel it. They surged and lift­ed, seem­ing to imbibe the very air with a gen­tle strength that embraced me as I walked across the moon­l­it dunes. Soon I would be away from this world and back on the bus, rock­ing down the dirt high­way to home.