Color photo, in mostly blue tones. Sunset. High wispy clouds are pink from the unseen setting sun. Lower clouds are already mostly dark, but on the left, just above the distant mountains, sunset-pink shines through. A line thin line of clouds are below even that, separating the peaks from the hills below. In the foreground are the evening-dark waters of Puget Sound.

“I’m not sure I want to be perfect and finished. Talk about boredom…”

“Look at the sky,” he said, and it was such a quick subject-change that I looked at the sky. There was some broken cirrus, way up high, the first bit of moonlight silvering the edges.

“Pretty sky,” I said.

“It is a perfect sky?”

“Well, it’s always a perfect sky, Don.”

“Are you telling me that even though it’s changing every second, the sky is always a perfect sky?”

“Gee, I’m smart. Yes!”

“And the sea is always a perfect sea, and it’s always changing too,” he said.

Illusions, by Richard Bach, 1977

I took this at the aptly named Sunset Hill Park, at sunset, on the first day of the new year.

It was a perfect sky, and a perfect sea.

I look for them every day, and you know what?

I always find them.

I hope you do too.

(Nikon Z7 II, Nikon Z 24-70mm f/2.8)