volcan momotombo

@highland.nicaragua

향기의 기억 만큼이나 색조에 관한 기억도 그 명줄이 길다. 그 때의 그 부드러운 옅은 violet 색조를 어떻게 잊을 수 있을까..

I was lucky enough to have this twilight in this geologically very special place. I was at the top of the hill in the highland area of more than 1,000m above sea level and watched this glorious sunset quite for a while.

Volcan Momotombo was there surrounded by the lake of Managua. The gentle light was casting all over the beautiful volcano, the lake, and the tropical forests on caldera terrain.

I was visiting La Jolla in San-Diego, US for 40 days of home stay when I was a student in university in 1980, actually more than three decades ago. And there was a boom which got my immediate attention at the bookstore in University of Southern California. It was a hard cover book of Carl Sagan, titled Cosmos. At then I was so fascinated by the all the illustrations of Stars, Galaxies and the beautiful texts of the gifted astronomic physicist. The space & history of our cosmos is huge playground of all the scientists. Theoretical physicists do their research and develop their hypothesis based on mathematical manipulation with super computer only because it's too expensive or impossible to do the experiment in lab on earth. Photon Accelerators of couple of kilometers diameter are the only feasible toys for them for earth scale experiment. As a student majoring in Physics the book was more than enough to encouraging and visioning my career as physicist. When I turned the page by page I was so thrilled by all the facts and result of observation.

In 2005 in Nicaragua, I was standing at the hilltop of the highland entrapped by the beauty of the twilight of the tropical country. The sunset was dark blue different from ordinary yellow-red spectrum. Just like the sunset on Mars, I was drowned by the mystic navy blue sky and the cool atmosphere of the highland made me feel so fresh and unearthly. And I was remembering the excitement and joy when I was reading the book of COSMOS long time ago. What a gorgeous planet we've been living on..