White Rock Lake, four miles/6.5 kilometers from downtown Dallas as the crow flies, offers a spectacular oasis of nature in the heart of urban mayhem, yet one place along its shores, to me at least, remains the most inviting, the most magical, the most diverse.

Sunset Bay rests on the eastern banks perfectly centered from north to south.  Like a lens it focuses the magnificence of sunset each day, a spectacle that moves south in the winter and north in the summer—yet that finds its way to this inlet no matter the season.  Nightfall always echoes the last gasps of day toward this gulf.

And in the bay takes shape the essence of nature’s efforts to reclaim the whole of this island of wild nestled in a sea of concrete.  Flora and fauna galore make this bight home throughout the year, and even as months come and go, life flourishes where the world of light touches last.

Yet only at sunset does the true power of the cove become apparent: the whole of the universe funnels to its core, the lifeblood of heaven and earth made manifest in the length of a single hour and in the breath of an ending as it births a beginning.  Shadows stretch long and dark lurks behind, and in those moments betwixt universes Sunset Bay yields its tastiest fruit.

This is a journey in parts, an exploration in images and text of that sacred amalgamation of places real and imagined, of light and lightlessness, of day and night, of city and nature, of the ethereal joined with the physical.

This is Sunset Bay seen when it matters most.