The Long Goodbye

There are places that hold meaning before you ever raise a camera.

Huntington Beach Pier is one of those places for me. Just across the street from where I married the love of my life, it's a stretch of coastline I'll never look at as just another location. Every time I'm there, I'm somewhere else too — standing at the beginning of something that turned out to be everything.

We were walking on the beach one evening, the way we do, and I had my camera with me the way I almost always do. The sun was starting its descent and something about the angle made me stop. I could see what was coming — the pier silhouetted against the fading sky, the light shifting from gold to amber to something almost impossible to name.

So I waited.

The sun moved slowly. Slower than usual, it seemed. As if it knew there was something worth lingering for. It dropped toward the horizon inch by inch, the silhouette of the pier growing sharper and more dramatic with every passing minute, until finally the sun came to rest perfectly on the ocean's edge — framed by the pier on either side, reflected in the water below.

I called the image The Long Goodbye. Not just for the unhurried way that sun took its time disappearing beneath the horizon, but because that's what the best moments do. They don't rush. They settle in. They let you hold them a little longer than you expect.

Some places just know how to say goodnight.