During the fall of my freshman year in college, I continued my athletic career by being by far the least skilled player on the junior varsity soccer team at the (then) Division III SUNY-Binghamton. In case college sports divisions need explaining to you: Division I is the stuff you see on TV that feeds the pros. Division II is where the best volleyball player from your high-school went. Division III is the place they let you walk up and ask if they have any spare number jerseys. Not quite, but this memory isn’t about sports details.
I struggled at every practice that fall, and just getting onto the field during a game would become a victory that I learned to cherish. Walking down the hill to the fields of the West Gym every afternoon was a bleak reminder of my limitations, and quite humbling. So in the long run, quite a healthy lesson, but plenty stressful at the time.
When the school year began, practices would begin and end in some light, but as the late summer moved to fall and the days got shorter, the dimness seemed to match my moods. That sense of gloom was augmented by the Binghamton autumn weather, which is generally overcast, and trends toward the gothic. A bit of suburban London or Seattle nestled into the armpit of New York State. Perpetually, there was a bank of dull, splotchy clouds that covered the sky to the horizon in all directions. Google says they are called stratocumulus clouds, the ones that look like grey-white cotton quilting, and they gave the sky a sense of roof.
On one particular day, though the day had been grey and blah as usual, and the ambience slowly dimmed, there was a sudden beauty. The edge of the cloud line started to gap at the horizon, and the late afternoon sun edged low enough to appear below the clouds. We’ve all seen it. I know I’m not describing a unicorn or the view of Earth from the Sea of Tranquility. It’s a sunset. Woop. But this one was in some ways my first. The change from black and white to color when Dorothy reaches Oz is a cliche, but it wasn’t in 1939. It was vibrant and striking. That’s what this moment felt like. The world had been dim and grey all day, and was getting dimmer and drearier, telegraphing it’s intentions. Then suddenly, golden light bright enough to bask in but not blind. A hint of warmth on my skin. The clouds are alive with dramatic textures from the under-lighting. And miraculously, the instantaneous appearance of fields of shadow-people stretching out from our feet to infinity…The moment lasts a second, a lifetime… I could go back to Binghamton right now, and stand on the exact spot on the field, and turn my body and head to the precise degree of angle that the sunlight came from that day. There are moments when I do, in my mind at least.
No doubt it’s this kind of attention to the finer aesthetics of meteorology that impressed my coach so, and ensured that they would not, in fact, have a number jersey available for me the following fall.