Exit by Stormlight

One rule I’ve been fairly assiduous about keeping is the one that mandates I throw ball with my son whenever he requests it. Given my spotty upbringing, I never learned to work on cars or build things, but I’m proud to say I’ve thrown footballs and baseballs with my son. I’m not half-bad at it, either. Not every guy can say that. Hooray for me.

Tonight, I suspect my 17-year-old son wanted an excuse to stand outside and look at the strange, orangey sky—he would have been self-conscious doing just that, so he enlisted me to throw a foam rubber football. Of course, I wasn’t going to say no, but not before snapping these pictures of June’s final exit, the first half of 2014 going out in a literal blaze of glory.

Looking east-southeast. Once these thunderstorms hit the Colorado high plains they really blow up.

Facing south, over the spine of my garage roof. Like nuclear hellfire.

It looked a lot more post-apocalyptic in the viewer. Oh, well.

I thought this had something of an interdimensional vortex look to it. As the sun set the tips of this clouds would turn an eerie pink.

At the same time, you have this to the north.

This is to the north and east, where the sun is going down.

This is the one photo in the bunch that captures the mood of the light. Note the clouds from two photos up.

The crescent moon falls behind the clouds on its way to set behind the Front Range.

Here’s a better look at that moon. Goodnight, moon. Farewell, June. I’ll eat my ice cream with a spoon
while I read Dune. See ya soon.

On top of all this, we had a great time throwing ball in the street. So far, so good, Summer 2014.