The Golden Hour

Photographers call the last hour of daylight "the golden hour". By that time in the afternoon, the sun's rays are slanting almost horizontally across the landscape, bathing everything in a different and very beautiful light.

Golden or not, however, this time of day speaks to most all of us. Having grown up in one of the last generations to spend much of their childhood outdoors, it speaks to me of long evening walks home, the bark of a distant dog, faint smell of wood smoke as the first piles of autumn leaves were being burned, and supper waiting on the table.

Photographer Steve Robinson captured this image in Mitchell County, Georgia - but it lives anywhere that there are late-afternoon memories to savor, and a slanting evening sun to light the way.