As first light emerges

(photo courtesy of Judi St Clair)
I have never been an early riser. But for much of this year I have been getting up at 6.30 am with my 13 year old son to get him off to school. He gets up at 6.15am to catch the 7.00am bus to the Esplanade train station and then the 7.30 bus to his high school. It is still dark at that time of the morning, although in recent weeks it is starting to get light earlier.

As Dianne Ackerman writes in her piece in the latest edition of Orion Magazine at dawn " everything shines. Paths grow easier to see.. jobs easier to tackle with renewed vigor". Very true!!

Orion is an excellent American magazine that delves into the connections between nature, science, justice, art, and politics. It publishes articles and photos on issues of environmental justice, political leadership, and economic practices, as well as practical examples of grassroots change.

Well worth a look. A link to the website is on the list of websites worth visiting. You can also visit though Facebook.http://www.facebook.com/pages/Orion-Magazine/38501629079

Here is an extract from the article by Diane Ackerman World at Dawn
http://www.orionmagazine.org/

"At dawn, the world rises out of darkness, slowly, sense-grain by grain, as if from sleep. Life becomes visible once again. “When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can’t think anymore,” Claude Monet once lamented. “More light!” Goethe begged from his deathbed. Dawn is the wellspring of more light, the origin of our first to last days as we roll in space, over 6.684 billion of us in one global petri dish, shot through with sunlight, in our cells, in our minds, in our myriad metaphors of rebirth, in all the extensions to our senses that we create to enlighten our days and navigate our nights"

"Whatever else it is, dawn is always a rebirth, a fresh start, even if familiar routines and worries charge in clamoring for attention. While waking, we veer between dreamy and lucid (from the Latin lux, light). Crossing that threshold each morning, we step across worlds, half a mind turned inward, the other half growing aware. “I’m still a little groggy,” we say, the eighteenth-century word for being drunk on rum. It’s a time of epic uncertainty and vulnerability, as we surface from disorienting dreams and the blindness of keeping eyes shut for many hours. As the eyelids rise to flickering light and the dimly visible, it’s easy to forget where we are, even what we are. Then everything shines. Paths grow easier to see, food easier to spot, jobs easier to tackle with renewed vigor. In rising light, doors and bridges become eye-catching. We may use all our other senses in the dark, but to see we need the sun spilling over the horizon, highlighting everything and pouring a thick yellow vitamin into our eyes. We’re usually too hurried to savor the elemental in our lives: the reeling sun, moon, and stars; prophecy of clouds; ruckus of birdsong; moss brightly blooming; moon shadows and dew; omens of autumn in late summer; fizzy air before a storm; wind chime of leaves; fellowship of dawn and dusk. Yet we abide by forces so old we’ve lost the taste of their spell. It’s as survivors that we greet each day."