Travel Writing

• When the Sun Stepped Aside

  

  There are moments when nature reminds us, rather abruptly, that we are not running the show. I stood on the top of a cliff at Sagres, facing the immense Atlantic, waiting for the moon to move across the sun. The sea stretched towards a horizon that seemed to have no intention of ending. Above it, two celestial bodies that we experience separately were about to meet before our eyes. And then the light began to change. Not darkness exactly. Something stranger. The familiar world became unfamiliar, as though someone had quietly turned a dial and altered the settings of the planet.