The Best Part of Each Day

A friend who rises early to paint each morning’s sunrise inspired me to capture photos of Merry Old Sol’s first peek over the horizon for the last year. I’m not as diligent as Debbie is at capturing every dawn, but I’ve seen enough now to make some observations.

Some mornings are not remarkable, but it’s worth getting up early to check. Sometimes I spy lingering stars fading from night’s canvas and make a wish or two to begin the day. Morning moons are softer and gentler than they were a few hours earlier. They’re a nice reminder that time softens hard edges and feelings. Always, always there’s a bird singing. Even when dawn begins in grays, happy trills and coffee make everything right. 

Some sunrises are a flashing neon message from God that I’m in the middle of a wonderful blessing. Usually a scarlet or deep apricot color infuses blues and lavenders. Then a brilliant glow backlights one cloud or several so it looks like a special effects artist is working overtime with a neon paintbrush. At this point, the effects can develop in several ways.

Sometimes those scarlet or apricot tinges bleed slowly outward into gesturing fingers. When this occurs, I’m reminded of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey where he repeatedly refers to the rosy fingers of dawn or dawn’s rosy fingers. Over two thousand years ago, Greek sailors enjoyed the same kinds of sunrises that dazzle me. The world has changed in so many ways, but dawn’s early light still works its magic on those of us willing to get up to see the display.

Other mornings, it’s as if the sky explodes. There’s no slow, gentle bleeding of color or light. It’s a nuclear flash of brilliance, and the day has begun. It’s a no-turning-back, continue-charging-forth moment that gets adrenaline pumping and hearts singing.

On rare occasions, morning light manifests itself in odd little peep shows. One of those occurred last week. In general, the sky was gray with bits of buttery gentle light peeping through every now and then.  Suddenly, a tiny square of orange ripped its way onto the stage and directed itself on an old farmstead in its path. I kept expecting more light, but it seemed content to shine through like a flame glowing behind isinglass.

We’ve all seen movie sunrises where celestial music plays as clearly defined rays break and spread over the horizon like a giant crown. When I’m outside watching those displays, I’m always disappointed that I hear only birds or crickets. It seems an orchestra ought to perform so loudly no one could sleep through it. I saw one of those sunrises last week as well and turned the radio down just in case I was missing angel music.

Not everyone is a morning person, but I’m sure a few weeks of watching dawn arrive in the eastern sky might convince a few slow risers to enjoy a front row seat to see the best part of the day.

Serendipity on Highway 183

Some words stick in the mind, and serendipity is one of many rattling around my cranium. In college, I hung out at a retreat called Serendipity House. I’d never heard the expression before, so after my first visit, I hit the dictionary.

 Imagine learning this fun-to-say term meant happy accident or pleasant surprise. That definition fit the old two-story home that served as meeting place and comfort zone for on-the-cusp-of-adulthood young people. Since that time, other unexpected pleasures have made me smile and recall that melodious word along with the warm feelings that accompany it.

Recently, I lucked into one of those unanticipated bits of fortune that make me realize how blessed I am to call this prairie home. My unforeseen benediction required a sequence of events to fall into place. Once they did, I recognized I’d encountered a mini-miracle.

Yes, there are big miracles that no one can miss, and there are tiny wonders that happen every day that we may or may not recognize. Fortunately, this one snapped me like a full-stretched rubber band so I knew I had enjoyed something pretty darn special.

My happy adventure began in the wee hours before dawn. My husband and I awoke dark-early to drive to the Platte River so I could crane watch. He knows I love seeing tens of thousands of my favorite birds staging along its shallow waters, so he humors me with these Spring  junkets. It doesn’t hurt that a nearby Cabela’s is a great place to warm up after a frosty bird watching endeavor.

When we hit Highway 9 in the deepest shadows of pre-dawn, I noted the full moon that had shone into my bedroom window the night before had journeyed from East to West, where it hovered like a big ol’ communion wafer. By the time we reached the bridge over Harlan County Reservoir in Nebraska, pale rose and lavender fingers infused the eastern horizon, but the only star-spiked black outlined that buttery globe in the West.

Somehow, I got so busy watching dawn break that I forgot to keep an eye on that sinking disc. North of Holdrege, Nebraska, sunrise was in full display. A huge yellow sphere pierced orange skies when I thought to look West. Instead of the retina-blasting glow in the East, pale blue silhouetted a fading ball that was only a whisper of its earlier brilliance.

That particular section of Highway 183 permitted a clear view to the East and to the West so that I could see almost the exact moment that sun and moon were directly across from one another like round ends of dumbbells. If I’d been home, I’d have missed seeing this alignment of two perfect orbs because of interfering rooftops and a slight rise west of our house. 

In this serendipitous flash, every sense tuned into the cycles of light and dark that drive human existence. The imaginative side of me considered that for an instant, my husband and I swung in a prairie hammock whose ends connected to both sun and moon.

While I expected the exciting part of our quest to be skies and cornfields filled with thousands of sandhill cranes, that part of the day was just the cherry topping the hot fudge sundae. The instant of discovering me suspended between rising sun and sinking full moon will trigger 1000s of future smiles and the joyous repetition of one of my favorite words--serendipity.

Spun Gold

              

One of the most interesting parts of life is making discoveries. Some folks think you have to travel far from home, get advanced degrees, or look at worlds beneath a microscope to do what Columbus, Pasteur, Archimedes, or Einstein did.  However, I’ve learned that if you pay close attention to each moment in your day, you can go to bed most nights and give thanks for another amazing insight.

                Most of my aha moments are special only to me, a loved one, or friend who enjoys nature as much as I, but yesterday morning was wake up in Brigadoon special.  It took an alignment of humidity, temperature, sunlight at just the right angle, and me being in the right place at the right time to create this magic moment. 

                I would have to say most magic moments require at least being in the right place at the right time to qualify as magical, but Sunday morning’s fog and resulting dew were necessary parts of this particular memory making moment.

  I walk the pastures around our property often, and I’ve seen a spider web or two on those rambles, but with the dew and the light at the right angle, I realized we have multitudes of very busy spiders living in the fields from here to Ellis. There were enough spider webs stitching those fields together to drive an arachnophobe crazy. I suspect that is true of about any field, anywhere, but until yesterday I didn’t realize how many spiders call earth home.

What made it possible to spot these webs that normally blend into the environment was an early morning fog that beaded filaments of hundreds of thousands of spider webs in the blue stem, brome, switch and other prairie grasses growing in the neighborhood fields. 

When the rising sun hit these moisture-laden webs, they become spectacular works of art.  Seeing just one of these glittering diamonds would have been blessing enough, but thousands dotted each acre.

 Like jewels found in nature, these treasures came in a trove of shapes and sizes.  Some spiders outdid themselves with platter-sized webs while others spun efficient, golf ball-size tapestries.  Because each highlighted web glistened in golden light, I could see each artist’s individual style.  Each spider had his or her own trademark technique for assembling a bug trap. 

Had we not had that heavy fog, had my husband and I not left the house as the sun peaked high enough to backlight the grassy pastures, had I not been intent on seeing the grass in the morning light as we traveled that road, I’d have missed seeing spun gold. 

I’ve lived a long time, wandered many country miles, and never seen such a sight.  Perhaps this will be my one and only time to see acre after acre of glistening spider creations.  If that is the case, this was blessing enough to last.