Natural Law

Murphy's law is probably the foremost of all the laws by which the old world keeps running: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Not far behind it, and ever so much more exquisitely phrased, is Payn's Law:

"I never had a piece of toast
Particularly long and wide,
But it fell upon the sanded floor
And always on the buttered side."

The corresponding law for sunsets (yet unnamed), runs thus"The splendour of the sunset is inversely proportional to the photogencity of the location in which it is observed and/or the availability of an operational camera." Which is the nice way of saying that the sunsets that plaster themselves over the window during the evening shift at work have been splendid, but have too much city in the way to make pictures that might truly do them justice. So late last month I drove out Jackson way, stalking the wild sunset. The one I encountered was indeed a good deal less vast and less vibrant than those I had admired in less spectacular settings, but it was, all the same, a pleasant place, and a grand moment in which to be alive. The eager winter edge in the air, and the comfortable sounds of distant cows you will have to imagine for yourself.