Sunrise

The sky over the prairie is enormous and splendid and even when there was 40 miles per hour sustained winds or a tornado-alley storm, the Nebraska sky was often splendid.  

Though I had surely been awake before sunrise on many an occasion, it wasn’t until the first year I lived in Nebraska that I paid attention to the look of the sky at sunrise.  I can still remember the day that I first looked up at sunrise.  I was up early to attend an event in Lincoln, more than 150 miles away.  I was traveling with some other faculty from the school where I was a professor and we left before sunrise.  We were heading south and miles and miles of open prairie were to the east as the sun came up over the horizon.  It was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen.  In the 8 years that I lived in Nebraska, the daily prospect of a splendid sunrise and sunset became normal.  To this day, more than 16 years since I left the midwest, I can still see that beauty in my mind.

I thought of all of this on Thursday morning when the sunrise painted the New Jersey sky with a lovely pink glow.  These days, I am often awake before the sunrise and I enjoy the chance to spy a look at the horizon as the sun comes up.  It’s no open prairie but rather a busy horizon filled with trees and houses.  But it is often lovely in its own way.

Winter sunrise light is one of the treats of this cold season and the view I spied on Thursday was a splendid reminder of Mother Nature’s beauty.