Independence Day with fireworks

I have often been out of the country on July 4, so I have developed a mixed relationship toward the holiday. On the one hand, I would like to imagine being part of a crowd watching fireworks as the evening grows darker. On the other hand, I hate crowds.

So normally, if we are in the US, I think about going somewhere where I might be able to glimpse fireworks. Last year, on the spur of the moment, we tried to find somewhere high enough in the hills to look out over the bay and catch sight, perhaps, of fireworks from the east bay and San Francisco. My first thought turned out to be everyone else's destination, so eventually we ended up in a crowd of people waiting in a park with very poor lines of sight. But paradoxically, that made each thing we managed to spot seem somehow more of an event.

This year, I had thought we might go to the waterfront in town, since at worst all 20,000 residents might show up. Then earlier in the week we saw the signs up saying the fireworks had been cancelled. Not really a surprise; the fire danger is all-too-real.

So I probably should have expected it, when last night the sounds of fireworks started to be heard. Apparently, somewhere along the way, the cancellation was cancelled.

There is something very different about fireworks experienced as a series of sounds instead of light effects. (I know from experience that we cannot see anything from our yard; the hill blocks the view to the waterfront, even though there is some acoustic anomaly that makes sound carry across it perfectly.)

I imagined the sounds as green and gold firebursts. Happy Independence Day.