Several years ago we made our first visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the middle of the night we climbed into a car with young friends and drove to Socoro, where the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is located. If you've never been there, it should be on your "bucket list." The secret is to get there before dawn, however, so you don't miss "The Ascension"...a daily rising up of thousands of snow geese from their sleeping quarters into the sky...one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. Something about the changing color of the sky stimulates them and on a signal apart from any human sound or inspiration, the sky is filled suddenly with these magnificent creatures. They soar above the refuge in a dramatic curtain call to the night before settling into a corn field where they undertake the true meaning of breakfast, breaking their night-long fast. Our young ornithological friends told us that there could be as many as 20,000 snow geese in a single ascension.
Part of my respect for that memory is my own appreciation for the pre-dawn period of time. As I write this it is 5:40 a.m. and I have been up for an hour. The awesome quiet, coupled with the beauty of the dark sky and sparse human sounds is the perfect time for me to write. I find my mind is clearer than usual, my energy is high, and my sense of well-being is profound. All of that may deteriorate as the day progresses, but I'm learning how to capture it and sprinkle it out sparingly throughout an increasingly-busy day. In a month or so I will re-learn how to share this spectacular time of day with song birds who will join me in celebrating the new day. But for now, in a frigid mid-winter, I'm the only being awake and functioning in the dark world which surrounds me.
I know that isn't true, but it feels that way. I almost resent the occasional shifting of gears in a truck on the street below the windows of our sun room. The lonesome wail of a distant siren tells me that others share this time of day with me as an ambulance streams to a nearby hospital. On Tuesday mornings the trash collectors begin their vital tasks right about now. The newspapers have been delivered already, their plop having disturbed the silence of pre-dawn some time ago. And on Mondays the sound of clanking glass as our home-delivered milk (what a treat) arrives in our milk box, led there by a delivery person who guides himself to our door with a flashlight so as to not disturb the sleeping neighbors with his truck lights. I suspect he and I share a similar respect for the pre-dawn beauty.
Today it will snow. The meteorologists have predicted a sizeable accumulation in what I hope is the last measureable snow of the season. We hope to escape it as we are heading off to visit friends in a place where this storm will not make its presence known. When snow starts in the middle of the night it adds even more to the quiet beauty of pre-dawn. Today that isn't the case. The storm is holding off until we are well on the road and away from the accumulation.
For now, I will finish this posting and sit for a few minutes just enjoying the peace and quiet of the pre-dawn. All too soon the business of packing the car and leaving will, by necessity, signal a new mode for the day. My hope is that the beauty of this hour can find a place in our car as we speed away into a new day.
Photo credit: Suzi McGregor at http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=8514685
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