It’s here

I’ve become addicted to getting up early to watch the sunrise.  Not that it’s so hard in winter, when the sun officially rises at about 7:25 AM.  But the first cardinal proclaims day about 6:42, give or take a few clouds, and the show happens before that. Still there’s plenty of time to get my tea and be seated in my dark room facing the southeastern sky.

It’s magic to watch the trees emerge as individuals, from a ragged block of blackness. I feel there’s something I contribute by witnessing them take form, even though they’ve been standing watch all night without my attention.  The black slowly creeps toward grey, and I wait with a shiver not of cold but anticipation, waiting for the first bird song. Hearing the first sharp call in the crackling cold air makes it official: the sun has come back.  

I  realize this practice has become something like a meditation, with a little naturalist curiosity added.  I have become eager to put my feet on the cold floor in the morning and take my post, as though something were waiting for me. There’s no program, no mantra, just noticing, and trying to notice deeper every day, every moment, looking at the same frame and finding new details, new shadings and new sounds.

I am intensely alive in these moments.  It feels like a bone-deep calling to witness the angle of the sun as it climbs up the round belly of the earth from its far southern post.  Of course, it’s actually the belly of the earth turning herself toward the sun, but because we think we live on a flat surface, and because we think we are standing still, we think the sun comes to us.

That’s because we’re people, we think like that.  I don’t know what the trees think. Not yet.