It may have been a parking lot, with fast food paper cups skidding about in the wind, and the smell of exhaust and asphalt in the air, but the sky was worthy of Paul Gauguin.

Though the air had turned cold, the canvas above was warm with undulating patterns of peach, gold and rose, bright and alive, larger than the activity below.

A happy conjunction of shoppers at the wheel (foot jumping from gas to brake to gas to brake, eyes hard-focused on the bumper ahead) and tropical island, with nothing but sand, sky and salt ocean air, the sound of waves crashing, and sighing, crashing and sighing again, and birds singing from the shore…