My friend Will Fowler used to say, “I don’t know what it is about a sunrise. I always feel most alive then.”
Will and I saw many sunrises together during our numerous all night discussions and fireside chats. We concluded there were too types of people who saw the sun rise. There were those who were up before the dawn to get a start on the day before the sunrise. These were people who farmed or worked construction or like me, a soldier. Or there were the people, like Will and I during our chats, who had been up all night and had yet to go to bed.
“I would always feel sort of naughty” he would tell me “Sort of as if I had been up to something all night and the sunrise had caught me.” And he should know as he worked many over night assignments in his days as a reporter.
As a flight engineer in the Army I saw the sunrise from both angles. There were many a day we would be up before the crack of dawn and ‘pull pitch’ and be ‘wheels up’ as soon as the sunrise was there to illuminate our way. Conversely, there were many missions, in the Middle East especially, that we flew under the cover of darkness. Sunrise was usually a signal the day was over and it was time to rest.
Depending on your location, a sunrise will look very different for you than for someone else. A sunrise in Miami is very different than a sunrise in Cairo or what I saw many a morning from my office window:
Sunrise over Frenchman Mountain, Las Vegas
I know… Who wants to have to see this right? 🙂
Regardless of what it is you are doing that has you awake before the break of day, I hope you agree with me that a sunrise always makes you feel alive…and always makes you smile.
How do you feel about a sunrise? Let us know in the comments.