I set out to write a good story.
I had just finished reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. It’s a book about how to write a good story. “Story” and “Life” are used interchangeably throughout the book, both literally and metaphorically. So it also happens to be about how to live a good story, in other words, how to live a good life.
There are some good stories out there. We all know some. Stories told about grand adventures, epic stories told about heroic feats. Romantic. Comedic. Lessons learned.
I was going more for one of those “put a little extra in the ordinary” or “find awe in the everyday” kind of stories.
For this story, I pledged to watch the sunset everyday for a week. Surely, something write-worthy would come of it, I thought.
I was out of town attending a class in Edmonds, WA, a quant little shoreside suburb north of Seattle.
Each night, I grabbed dinner to-go and walked to the public park and beach. Each night, at 6:37pm, the sun set behind the mountains of Olympic National Park across the sound from where I sat. Each night, I was thinking of things to write. Thinking. Not writing. But absorbing the moment was more important. The picnic table. The sun. Me. I hoped a few sunsets strung together would inspire a story.
At first, I tried to personify the sun. Something about having a standing date with her. She played hard to get, some nights, hiding behind the clouds and slipping below the mountains without even a peek.
After two nights sitting at the same picnic table, I decided to claim it as my own. If I sat in the same spot every night and watched the sun drop down out of the same part of the sky every night, there could be something said about the same person and the same sun vs. what is different. As Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
The last night I was there, a man was blasting club music from a portable speaker. He was dancing across the driftwood, stepping in beat with the music. He danced back and forth, back and forth across the beach. My observations settled around something like “dance as if no one is watching.”
After five nights of sunsets, I didn’t have much. I had a few ideas but all felt like regurgitated versions of stories already told.
For the next two days, I took a road trip up to the North Cascades for some scenic driving and hiking. I still thought about the sun, floated thoughts around in my head, and tried a few times to write something…anything.
Saturday eventually came, and I was making my way back to the Seattle area, as I had a mid-day flight home on Sunday. As I drove south out of the mountains, I thought again about the sun. An idea suddenly popped into my head, and I ran some quick GPS directions to confirm that I could make it to the beach in Edmonds in time for one more sunset.
During the next hour and half, through traffic, construction, and pouring down rain, I was set it make it in 8 minutes before the actual sun was to set. Serendipitous! About 15 minutes outs, the rain let up a bit, and I saw a big golden glow coming from the west. Dare I say I felt giddy to get there? To see the sun set over the mountains one more time before I went home?
In the last few miles, the rain picked up again. It was pouring! I pulled into the park, and the big golden glow had shrunk to a golden sliver of a streak across the sky. One other car was in the parking lot, a driver still in the front seat, not willing to bear the rain. I threw on my rain coat and got out, found my picnic table, and watched the sun set yet again.
I walked back to my car. I was drenched. I was also smiling.
And then it came, the epiphany. A good story can simply be a picnic table, the sun, and me.
