I remember how one day, on my way home from a late afternoon hike, sunlight hit a cloud hovering on the far ridge. The sunlight turned the cloud pink, and the cloud turned the Douglas firs and madrones pink, and turned the long grasses in the meadow pink, turned the red-dirt logging road pink, turned my hands and arms and skin pink. The whole world glowed like breeze-brightened ember. I stopped and stood there a second, gob-smacked, gawking, wondering many scenes just as mighty I had already witnessed and forgotten, and pitying myself for being alone, for having nobody with whom to share such transcendence. Then I heard a voice—an inner voice, like the one I listen to when I’m writing—and it said that…