Out at Sunset

For as long as I can remember I've been partial to evening's light and the fading of it.  I think we all find beauty in that soft light.  I remember watching the sun set into fields outside our farm and then scrambling to the highest limb I could climb on our big tree just to see it set again.  It was the warm wash of light and the coolness that then came with it's absence that was the reward of a long days work.  I, with time, found myself always looking forward to each sunset and stopped to take them in as much as I could.  By the time I got to college it was a habit so I'd inevitably go for a run around evening time.  At a small college in rural Kansas I was able to run a route that took me out of town and running west for the setting of the sun and back east again with the orange glow on my back and on the whole scene in front of me for miles and miles.  When I ended up in the city (St. Paul, MN) for my last two years of school I faced a problem for the first time in my life of not being able to get past buildings and trees to see the sun set.  You can't walk out of a city.  I remember trying to drive out once only to be stuck in traffic surrounded  by glory in the clouds above, my only indication that I indeed missed a good one.  So  seven years later when we moved back to my home town after having our first baby, I was thrilled to be out of the city and back in a place where small towns of a thousand fit in a square mile and I knew I could walk to the edge of the mile road and get a view.  I didn't always do that, but just knowing I could meant something.

When we moved to Istanbul four years ago, I thought sunsets were over for me.  When we were looking for apartments we happened upon one that was a five minute walk to the seaside.  That was an answer to prayer for a country girl like me.  That horizon on the sea was a place of refuge for me and I walked there often just to see the sun set.  That piece of sky was free of apartment buildings.  It ushered in a fresh breeze and gave the eyes a place to rest.  Not just for me but for lots of other people who ended up there for a walk or came just to sit out on the rocks.  The seaside (sahil) was not a place of solitude from people, but from the city scape.  So those first two and a half years I had a place to watch the sunset. In a city of 15 million it was a miracle for me.  A personal answer to prayer.

A year and a half ago we moved to a new part of the city.  Aaron rode the bus for one and a half hours out to this suburb of Cekmekoy and he walked many miles scouting out apartments.  When he had a few good leads we rented a car and came out as a family for the day, driving around, looking at different places and our present apartment was one of those.  I remember Aaron and I coming out on a bus when the kids were in school to make our final decision.  We had seen it once and wanted to take a second look.  Then we walked the neighborhood and thought it through.  I remember being sold on the location more than the apartment.  It was literally on the edge of Istanbul.  We could walk out of our neighborhood (two blocks) and be out to the hills and forest.  It was hard to pass that up.  It has proven to be worth more than a superb location near the forest and with access to sunsets.

Here in our new place I have a special route I like to run or walk.  I just got back and thus the reason I'm writing about all of this.  My route goes through a park and back, out past the edge of the army land, back west into a little neighborhood and then out onto a road that skirts the edge of a villa with the whole view of the forest to the north.  I always stop there to take in the view, the forested hills to the north and the city to the west.  The sun sets on the city and washes the hills with a golden light.  There is something that seems significant in standing on the edge of such a large city and watching the day close upon it.  On the edge there I can hear the silence behind me and the noise of the millions of people before me.  The noise is like a buzz and you wouldn't even notice it if it weren't for the moment the footsteps of someone approaching walk somewhere out of that buzz and into the silence you're in.  Simultaneously you become aware of the noise and the silence.  And from my hill the sun sets not on the corn fields of my youth, or the sea of two years ago, but on this city that has strangely become home.  It's funny how the sights you know will be scarce you start to miss.  And so this sight of the sunset over this immense city of 15 million is endeared to me and I will miss standing in that significant spot.  Significant for more than words can say.

For a young girl who vowed she would never live in a big city, to now be grown and living in one of the world's largest cities is ironic.  That I will miss this place says much about everything that happens to a heart willing to let go of preferences and little about my love for cities.  All I can say is that the Lord always knows best and I'm lately amazed at how much I'm going to miss.