Don’t let the sun go down without me

An old friend once asked, “Would you rather look at a mountain or a building?”

We were sitting having coffee and he was expounding on the virtues of all that man has created — cities, cars, computers, Crocs — the great bottomless well of imagination and perseverance of the human being.

“A sunset or a beach ball?”

“The ocean or a bathtub?”

He was being a smart guy.

“A mountain,” I said, “with the ocean in front, a sunset behind, and why not throw in a few bald eagles and a lion.” I could be a smart guy too. As the days get shorter and colder now that Labor Day is done, it makes me think of him, long gone, and all the reasons why nature — transporting, lifegiving, overflowing with wonder, healing — beats concrete.

Although as a city-ish person, I forget too. Days go by when I don’t look for the sun going down below a horizon. I forget, away from the ocean and surrounded by buildings, the sun is available for that same glorious sunset we get at the beach in mid-July.

I sit inside and I sulk, almost a year to wait.

My friend might have said — “Buildings never go away, sunsets do.” It’s a good point which makes the sunset even more precious. Each and every day, to get that burst of awe — and what a show! — you have to try to catch it.

When the spirit needs a lift, you don’t climb a high-rise building.

Just ask the experts — the people of Iceland, land of the midnight sun. When I visited earlier this summer, I watched the sun dip below the earth at midnight and pop back up at 3 a.m. In the deep winter it’s the opposite, only a few hours of fuzzy sunlight.

“How can you stand it?” is what every curious visitor asks. We can’t believe these happy people — they’re way on top of the U.N.’s happy meter — could laugh without more of our big, bright, hot companion.

“We get outside when the sun’s up,” one local tells me, “we work with nature. If we don’t, we get depressed.”

We all know the feeling. Some cold days we have to convince ourselves to stay outside for more than a minute, not just run to the car or the train. We have to remind ourselves we need nature to keep us smiling, and without it, the days of winter feel like being stuck in an airplane.

If my old friend was still alive, I’d tell him, “Yes, man has created a whole world out of nothing. It’s beyond extraordinary. “

But without nature, I’d say, none of it would be possible. No human being is too creative or intellectual or capable not to recognize that. Not even you, smart guy.

Or I may have asked him to ride with me to the top of a skyscraper in deep, dark winter at sunset — go to the top floor of an ultra-modern man-made miracle with a roof top bar overlooking the city, and see how the two together create an unbeatable pair. Skyscraper and sunset, man and nature.

We both would have toasted our respective muses. We both would have been jaw droppingly amazed.

But I bet I would have scored a wee bit higher on the happy meter. Donna Debs is a longtime freelance writer, a former KYW radio news reporter, and a certified Iyengar yoga teacher. She lives in Tredyffrin. She’d love to hear from you at ddebs@comcast. net.