360 Sunset

Episode #903

May 23, 2026

When I was in high school, I loved visiting my friend’s parents’ house in Cowan Heights, the eastern foothills of the Orange County basin.

The sunsets fired up the western sky, blooming up from the ocean and sparking a green flash as the sun touched the water. Brilliant orange and red streaks brushed across the smog and clouds.

And as the color faded to a glow, the lights of Orange County blinked on like a starscape across the basin below.

There were visits to Cowan Heights, where I dreamed, “I’m going to live here someday.”

My path did not lead to the Orange County foothills but instead to Aguanga, California, 20 miles east of Temecula, in the 4,000-foot-high foothill chaparral.

My property sits on a ridge of Mount Cahuilla’s alluvial plain. There is a 360° view of all the mountain horizons in the region.

At the summer solstice, the sun sets at Sunset Beach. On the winter solstice, the sun falls behind the San Onofre power plants. I think it would be fun to make a stop-motion video from my western-facing balcony, featuring the movement of the sunset from Sunset Beach to San Onofre, solstice to solstice.

10 minutes before sunset, the sun glows orange. A band from yellow to orange to red stretches across the western horizon.

The clouds in the east blush pastel pink, demure in the light. As the sun drops behind the Ortega Mountain range, a green flash in the col of Saddleback Mountain stabs my eyes. Moments later, the sun falls below the ocean horizon, and the sky explodes into a rainbow of color. Streaks from deep purple through magenta, red, then orange, and yellow blanket the sky on every horizon, surrounding my house, cozy in its embrace.

I scan the color at the edges of the Earth as I stroll around my house. Paula waits for me as I return to the front yard. I put my arm around her and she around me as we gaze off into the West. The sunset is painted on every mountain and ridgeline. The colors fade up to the purest blue of the sky. This is the moment of warm photographic colors. Light skims across surfaces rather than hitting them from above, revealing textures—the chaparral, wood grains, blossoms, ripples in sand. The world is vivid and painterly.

A sudden breeze chills as we hug each other closer. The blue sky is the first to darken. The clouds turn to shades of gray. Finally, the ground light evaporates. The universe reveals itself as stars blink into existence, and the Milky Way is thrown across the sky.

We walk arm in arm to the front door with the sounds of crickets and owls to keep us company. 
This is where our paths have led. And this is where our dreams of 360° sunsets have come true. 

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