That Glowing House Time Of Year

How does a season announce itself? To me, summer begins when one house down the street glows intensely. It happens each evening shortly before sunset, and it happens because the sun’s position in the sky causes it to shine at a certain angle.

The setting sun itself is obscured by buildings, and it’s only in the facade and windows of the house that I can see the strength of its light. It first appears at some point in May, and recurs each night for much of the summer.

The sun sets in the west. As the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice approaches, the position of the setting sun moves farther to the right (northwest while facing west). The setting sun’s position on the horizon shifts so much that even those who don’t pay particular attention to this may have noticed that the summer sunset and the winter sunset (and sunrise) have different backdrops (though this effect is more subtle closer to the equator).

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My father has been photographing the landscape from a fire tower throughout the year. The tower’s lookout faces west. Comparing a sunset from October (left) to May (right) provides a good illustration of how far the sunset moves along the horizon over the months.

The shifting position of the sunset and sunrise has given rise to notable phenomena such as the Yosemite Firefall, in which orange light from the setting sun lights up a waterfall that runs down the face of El Capitan, making the water look like lava. The Firefall takes place in mid-to-late February each year.

Man-made objects also interact with the sun’s position on the horizon, such as Manhattanhenge, where the setting sun drops below the horizon exactly in the center of the urban canyon of its east-west streets on certain evenings in May and July (including the date of this post, which is Friday, May 29). Its namesake is Stonehenge, a massive monument aligned with the position of the summer solstice sunrise.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, a map of viewing spots with dates instructs people where and when to watch the sun drop exactly in the center of the Golden Gate, the narrow strait where the San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean. The phenomenon takes place between September and April at various points in and around Berkeley.

The glowing house down the street is my personal version of these well-known phenomena of the sun’s position. Perhaps you have one. My parents look forward to the time of year when the setting sun backlights a row of irises that bloom along the road by their driveway.

Like the glowing house, it’s something they notice in May, as evidenced by these photos my mother sent me a couple of years ago. I wonder how many others experience this: something that makes you say “that time of year when this happens”.

I began enjoying the glowing house years ago. The earliest photograph I could find of its luminous portrait is from May of 2018. I’ve never really registered the exact first day it happens, but the first day this year I photographed it was on May 17. Even less so the last: the latest date in the year I’ve found was early August.

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It creeps into the corner of my eye each year, then fades out imperceptibly. The time stamps on the photos, combined with the fact that the sun crosses back to the same place in early August as it was in early May, suggest that it begins by early May, possibly earlier, and continues through early August, possibly later.

Until now, the glowing house has been a subtle detail in the background of life. Some years, its appearance is exciting, like an old friend is returning. Other years, it makes me sad. Has another year really gone by? Is this summer really going to feel like summer?

This phenomenon isn’t as dramatic as, like, the first snowfall of the winter, or the first ripe tomato from the garden in the summer, but there is something about how particular it is that makes me so satisfied. It’s like this is the detail I want preserved about my life one hundred years from now: that I lived down the street from a house that, each summer, glowed orange in the sunset.

All photos by Emily Wick unless otherwise noted