The Green Flash
We have been on the lookout for a few excellent guest bloggers, each sharing a passion for a unique niche area of ours.
I was quite amazed that this guest blogger applicant, through his worldly sailing journeys, has followed a similar path as I. In search for the ever elusive "green flash".
Welcome aboard Jo Luke Giles. Originally an urban planner in UK, presently making Calgary his home, Jo Luke seems to share many common interests, primarily perhaps, suatainability issues. Thank you for this wonderful story. We hope to hear more from you! Oh, and be sure to; be excellent and keep your eyes peeled.
The Green Flash
by Jo Luke Giles
I feel I have entered into one such arrangement with a lovely man named Robin Wade. Electronically we met. Telephonically we spoke. But very soon into our conversation our words made nice.
We share a common mania, a thing that itches us in a likewise place. The Green Flash...
Robin advertised on the Internet for intern bloggers to spread his words of sustainability far and wide. I applied, he read my blogs as examples of my style. He called me from up a tree in Alabama.
Our trusty wiki friends describe Green Flash as "optical phenomena that occur shortly after sunset or before sunrise, when a green spot is visible, usually for no more than a second or two, above the sun."
I am dubious.
I had read about the green flash in a book years before, and so, every night out there in the middle of the ocean, I watched, I observed, I drank in many a beautiful sunset waiting for the green flash. I even persuaded my fellow sailors into hoisting me atop the mast for a better look. I did not see it.
I’m not an untrusting person, but I began to think that the green flash was a seafaring tale that people liked to spout after a few too many rums… and that got me thinking. Why was it that I had never heard people talk about it before I sailed the ocean in 2008, but then any time thereafter that I described my adventure, The Green Flash was sure to be mentioned?
I investigated. I scoured through song lyrics and pop culture trying to find a book, an article, something that was putting the green flash out there for people to tease me with.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an excerpt from the script for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Gore Verbinski, 2007)
“Ever gazed upon the green flash,
Master Gibbs?
I reckon I seen my fair share.
Happens on rare occasion.
The last glimpse of sunset,
a green flash shoots up into the sky.
Some go their whole lives
without ever seeing it.
Some claim to have seen it who ain't.
And some say...
It signals when a soul
comes back to this world from the dead.”
So ask me about the green flash, I will tell you the truth. I haven’t seen it and I tried my hardest. I will also assume you have seen Pirates of the Caribbean.
Be excellent & keep your eyes peeled.
