Christmas Eve sunrise

sunrise:  7:11          blog time remaining:  7 sunrises

I love the little sting of cold air on my cheeks in my snowy back yard.  I never felt it in Colorado, maybe only because of their unusually mild December, but it could also be because the air is so much drier out there.  Anyway, it's nice to be home.

It was a midnight homecoming filled with irrepressibly excited dogs.  My 6:30 alarm challenged my resolve, with a part of me still on mountain time at 4:30.  I can do, I can do it!  One eye open... close.  Other eye open...close.   Finally a crow called out to me to wake up and get out there, so I did.

moon, dogs, and morning light

snow lined tree lace spilling into the moon

As an early Christmas present to myself, I walked around the kids' bedrooms to peek at them all sleeping.  Everyone home, all their beds filled - one, two, three, four...five?  Yes!  I have a bonus child this morning in A's spare bed.  The covers were pulled up too high to see the face, so I'll have to solve the mystery later.  No matter - a merry Christmas Eve to all, and all are welcome.

I loved the sky and air and both eastern and western vistas today.  Next year, when I begin posting in my new blog (the sunrise blogger), I think I will try and choose days when the full-to-waning moon is setting during the dawn hour.  It is my favorite.  What an exquisite morning - so worth getting up.

 

 frozen pond, moon, and morning light

dawn: acts 2 and 3

sunrise:  6:36

If I compare the sunrise to a dramatic performance, and one could argue that the daily emergence of the source of life on the planet merits such a classification, then it is a drama that comes in several forms.

Recently we have had several one-act sunrises.  Thick cloud cover gradually goes from from dark to lighter gray.  Now and again there is a faint tint of pink that indicates the gently climactic moment in the drama.

Some dawn productions are decidedly more elaborate.  There is the rising light over a black horizon, an eye-catching backdrop as introductory scene.  Then there might be a dazzling pre-dawn fuchsia along the boundary of the eastern sky which lasts for only a few minutes.  After that, the entr'acte - a more muted segment of transition time before underlighting begins to bring in the next theatrical moment.  The flattening angle of the sun along the underside of clouds creates a glorious color show, sometimes across the entire sky.  Then, that scene too fades from brilliance.

It is the final act, sometimes several acts into the day, when the sun itself finally emerges onto the scene.  The white light of the new day illuminates the world.

I would have to be outside for an hour to see the whole show, so some days I have to choose which scenes I will attend.

I witnessed two distinct acts in the sunrise show this morning, both quite beautiful. 

1st US view of dawn?

sunrise:  7:11 or thereabouts

J suggested that I report in my blog post that we left the house at 2am in order to drive the hour and a quarter to Mount Desert Island and hike up Cadillac Mountain and arrive at the top as the sun rose.  That was the ambitious idea...

Truth be told, we rushed away at 5:40am and arrived at the summit by car.  We were there in time to see the first dawn in the country, according to some (I am in the camp that argues that first dawn is at the easternmost point in the US, at West Quoddy lighthouse in Eastport, Maine -- see February 14 entry).  Cloud cover was dense, except for one sliver of horizon just north of the obscurity that thoroughly blocked the face of the sun itself.

After 50 years of visits to the island, this was J's 1st time ever up Cadillac.  It was my second.  Both times I have been pummeled by an incessant wind, but this one was an icy blast that stabbed right through fleece and denim.  Every puddle was glassy with ice.  One of the dozen or so dawn watchers arrived late, huddled in a very new looking down parka;

"Did we miss it?" he asked in a distinctly southern voice.  He gave a shiver and hunched his shoulders up against a gust of frozen air.  "Good thing we stopped at LL Bean, anyway.  When it's this cold, money is no object."

There haven't been too many sunrises that I've shared with a crowd -- Cadillac Mountain, Boston Harbor.  I'm usually alone in more private locations.  I like to see how many people brave the early hour and the elements to stand outdoors in the presence of blossoming day.

With its reputation of being the site of our nation's first dawn, it makes sense that many choose to be present on top of Cadillac for that uniquely illuminating moment.  It is as dependable and inevitable as anything in our human experience.  Something to be counted on, no matter what triumph or calamity has struck the world, whether we are there to witnesss it or not.  It is a powerful draw.

I wonder how often there is no one on the summit of Cadillac at sunrise.  ??  I suppose we'll never know.  If anyone ever goes to check, someone will be there.

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DON'T FORGET TO VOTE

uprootedness

sunrise :  6: 47

For those who are paying attention, you'll will have noticed the incongruent jumps in sunrise times at the top of my posts.  That's what happens when I travel, even short distances. 

Sunrise in Boston today was officially 6:54.

In Middlebury VT it was 7:04.

And here in Hampden, Maine it was 6:47.

In fact, when you think of it, the sun is constantly in a state of rising somewhere.  And so are we, getting up to meet the day, somewhere on the Earth.

Nice to be home.  Since September 25th, the last 18 mornings, I have changed location 13 times.  On the one hand it has kept me preoccupied, entertained, busy with activity and logistics.  On the other hand, I will be happy to sit still for a while, even if it means some lonely moments in this empty nest. 

These morning walks and contemplations have been extraordinarily useful as a thread of peaceful consistency amidst the uprootedness.

My dad used to travel a lot when I was a kid.  A week here, a few days there, breakfast in one city, dinner in another.  Home - away - overseas - home - back in the race.  Some thrive on it, as I think he did.  I don't know how long I would last without some down time.

Frost was present in sizable patches over the grass today.  There is an icy chill to the mist that hovers over the pond; the cattails are running to seed.  Our three dogs were thrilled to be home (though really, it's hard to distinguish from their every day thrill).

first autumnal chill

sunrise:  5:48

August 24th, and today I felt the first autumn like chill in the morning air.  Wonderful.  Most of the trees are still entirely green, but their leaves shiver in a dryer, wearier fashion at this time of year.  They are preparing to make their final transitional performance before they heave a sigh and let go.

This one tree began turning almost two weeks ago (see photo, Aug 14). It is in its brilliant prime now - the advance scout of fall.

There is no light I have seen anywhere that can top the enchantment of autumn sunlight in New England.  I am looking forward to the next two months outdoors.

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I had an interesting realization as I looked ahead on my sunrise calendar yesterday. 

The latest sunrise in December (standard time) will be 7:12am, where it will hover for a few days near the end of the month before shifting back in the annual swing towards earlier dawns.  (If you didn't happen to read my explanation of why the latest and earliest sunrises don't occur at the solstices, see June 10th entry)

The latest sunrises for this year will NOT be at the end of December, however, but in the first week of November.  Daylight savings time ends on the first Sunday in November, which will be the 7th this year.  Therefore, the sun will rise at 7:13 on November 1st, progressing later to 7:20am on November 6th (Saturday), and drop back an hour the next day (6:21am). 

It was encouraging to note that it is just over two months away, not four, to those wonderful late risings.

illusion of a rescue

sunrise:  4:51

For the second time in a week I had to rescue an animal from my little dog pack.  Ugh!  This time it was a neighborhood cat.  I've seen her before, but have no idea where she lives (calico cats are all female, right?).  Once I dragged the mighty hunters indoors, I went back to check on the cat, who had disappeared.  I hope she's okay.  While I wait for my heart rate to slow down, I'll load my pictures for today...

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Here is another rescue story from my cousin's blog.  He is usually a political blogger (with a more conservative take than mine), so this show of compassion for a dragonfly was a standout for me.

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Take note that the latest sunset of the year is this evening (several days after solstice).  So after tonight - the days are getting shorter, the sunrises later, and the sunsets earlier.  It doesn't feel right, does it?  The summer is only just beginning and we have already begun the slow descent of daylight towards the darkness of December.

There's no rescue for a decaying year.  Its descent is as inevitable as the daily rising of the sun (which won't go on forever either, but from our human evolutionary perspective, we can consider it inevitable).  Every rescue, in fact, is an illusion of sorts.  Dragonflies, cats, fawns, people...  We do not really save anyone or anything, we only facilitate the delay of a final endpoint, that place where every creature on Earth is headed.

But the illusion is a worthy one - and wonderfully uplifting.

That's life.

nine days around the earliest sunrise

sunrise:  4:49

Take a look at the the time.  This is the first in a stretch of 9 sunrises listed at 4:49am for my town.  The earliest sunrise of the year will be on June 14th, about a week BEFORE the summer solstice.  The latest sunset will be about a week AFTER solstice, thus the longest day occurs at solstice. 

Why these three things don't coincide exactly has something to do with the Earth's tilted axis relative to the sun. 

Here is the other surprising thing I've learned.  Around the solstices the sun rises only a few seconds apart from day to day; in the days around the equinoxes it rises closer to two minutes apart.  The difference in the rate of change has to do with the fact the Earth's rotation around the sun is an elipse, and not a circle.  When the Earth is closest to the sun in its annual elliptical revolution (at the March and September equinoxes), it is moving past the sun more quickly.

The explanations of all these phenomenon are not easy to process (at least, not easy for me), but if you're interested, this sentence has a couple of links that take a shot at it.

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Inspired by N's post yesterday, I bit the bullet and set my wake up alarms for 10 minutes earlier.  4:10am and 4:20am - the earliest I'm going this year.  She reminded me that it pays to get out there about 20 minutes ahead of sunrise, and it paid off today.