mornings

I know that I go off a lot about the morning. This blog hasn't really seen a lot of it, but in my old blog, I think I may have beaten my audience to death with it. Still... there is something magical about the mornings. It isn't only the time of day that makes it special, althoughit certainly does play a part of it. It is also that I am out there nearly completely by myself. I have rarely seen someone out in the park on a weekday morning at sunrise.

I don't have to talk to anyone. Have you ever gone a day without talking. How about this, have you ever gone a day without considering someone interacting with you? It is a beautiful thing to be in the

moment and not pulled from it by someone else's feelings. Yes, sharing experiences is nice, however, there is a world that only happens in your mind. To ignore those things is to live a more shallow existence. The mornings are space for me to just be. Sometimes, I walk with my eyes closed and let the sounds of the earth waking up around me carry me forward.

There are a couple magical times of day. I was reading an article about national geographic photographers and it stated that many of them won't even go out to take any sort of picture if it isn't morning or evening. The sun lengthens the shadows of the trees and the sunlight lights the air golden. The mornings have one thing over the evenings: They are mine. The evenings are my family's. Even now, as I am typing this, I can hear Henry and Nora practicing piano downstairs with Jenny. (and I am having subtle guilt feelings about taking this time to write) In the morning, they are completely unaware that I have even left the house. Sleeping, silently... oblivious, and the world is mine without guilt... freedom for an hour or two every morning.

Fishermen head out early in the morning to catch their basketfulls. There is a reason for this. The world

is wild in the mornings. Animals are out and what was Rutland State Park, a plot of land run by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, is now run by the coyotes and bears. The world is theirs until we wake up. Every morning I walk into their territory, and they are there... shocked at my intrusion. If I can leave our world for a little each morning and step into theirs, I am that much more fulfilled.

The air is cool and the black flies are still too cold to fly. It is nothing but peace and stillness. The river sometimes sends tendrils of fog into the air, spiraling up and out. The route I walk sometimes leads me into banks of fog that hug the curves of the Ware River. Eventually the road climbs higher and I am left walking above clouds of steam and fog so dense that it feels like I am flying above cloud level. It is a crystalline, ethereal world, filled with newness and just a tiny piece of Nature's wild... and in the morning, it is mine.
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