It's no wonder we measure time by the sun. I'm not talking about days and years only, but moments. For one resplendent extended moment this afternoon, as the sun moved below the hills to the west, the sky was a riot of reds, blues and grays.

How much do we miss by not being receptive? If I hadn't looked out the bedroom window at just the right instant, I wouldn't have seen any of this. It would still have been there for anyone to drink in, but I'd never have known.

It was pure luck. I wasn't sitting with my camera ready, waiting for it to happen. It's humbling to contemplate what beauty there must be in every day that I miss because I'm looking the other way, or because I'm not prepared to accept it. What great things must be happening that I'll never know about. It makes me shudder to realize how much time I spend with my eyes closed, literally and figuratively.

I spent maybe two or three minutes walking around the house, pointing my camera at the sky. The colors and configurations kept changing, and I didn't want to miss any of it. In the end, there was no way to record it all. You had to be there, and I'm glad I was.

Within another two or three minutes, it was gone. The sky was still beautiful, but in a different way. Darker. A little less showy, but still striking. It might have made just as amazing a picture, in the hands of a more skilled photographer.

Moments like that are fleeting. You just have to have faith that something else will come along. Well, you know something else will come along. The faith you have to have is that you'll be ready for it. There's no way to experience everything, or even to see every sunset. Sometimes you have to find your beautiful moment by actively searching for it, taking what seems ordinary and looking at it differently. Tonight I was just lucky, and I'll settle for that when it happens.