Sunrise

I sat on the grey stone, my keys in my lap, cell phone beside me. It was quiet in a noisy way, the birds waking up as the sky lightened. I could hear them rustling around in the bushes behind me - I preferred to imagine it was birds instead of some kind of rodent - and the cranes were down by the water calling to each other. Fish splashed every so often, snatching water-skating bugs, and the odd duck honked at its brethren.

I had left my car by the gate, but I could still see it, and there were faint sounds of car doors shutting and dogs barking. The sounds of traffic were absent though, as was the noise of the city. There were no lawnmowers or children, and the only wires were the telephone poles instead of lights.

The sky was a faint pink, bleeding into blue, and the edges were still a deep blue from the night. It was pleasantly warm, the summer heat finally cooling down as we approached September. I had come to see the sun rise and relax a bit, even if I was technically trespassing. I had lived here before, though, and knew that nobody really enforced that rule unless you made trouble. Just sitting on the ground staring across the lake at the horizon wouldn’t get me in trouble.

I hoped.

Half of me was a bit disappointed that I had lost my friend’s number, so I was alone, but most of me was fine just sitting there, playing with the pebbles as I watched the sky. Clouds were lying in thin strips overhead, and I could hear the sounds of a boat starting up, far across the water on the other shore.

Time passed, and finally I saw it. A thin red line had just appeared over the tree line, and as I watched, my mouth falling open a little, it rose a bit and the very top turned a deep dark orange. Blinking, I realised that I must have never watched a sunrise. I mean really watch it. I would have remembered.

Slowly the red-orange ball rose and turned orange-red, and I thought dimly of the scene from the Lion King, how there was no brightness to it yet. Any brightness came not from the sun, but from the sky around it, a light blue now. The circle itself was only that, a clear line of definition shaping it as it got higher. Before long the top seemed to reach a line of something invisible, and was dyed orange-red-yellow, still not glowing but definitely brighter now, less clear to the eye.

I watched until it was all one again, and a brilliant stripe of red-gold was painted across the lake in a solid color, wavering with the water. I imagined swimming in it, my own skin the color I was seeing, and wished I had the time to go down to the shore before the sun rose completely. I would just have to savor it instead. Maybe next time.

The sun had started shining in its usual yellow-white by the time I stood up, and a small group of does had wandered around on the shore for a while. When I moved, they left, heading back into the fields. It wasn’t some big, life-changing event, that shifted my view of the world forever, but it was very nice, and I can’t believe I’d never seen a sunrise before. Maybe I would make a habit of this in the morning.