Morning has broken

The best part of my day has to be the time between 5 and 6 a.m. I have an 8 a.m. class and an hour drive before I get to work, so I have, ironically, become an early riser. As a teen-ager and young adult, I always worked a third shift job because I was wired to be a late night person. Mornings made me break out in hives....

Living out in the country as we do, we have no near neighbors for more than three miles, if you don't count the monstrousity being built on the ridge which is a summer and vacation home. We are all alone in our little hollow and always will be as I own most of what I see here. Thus, it is quiet here. So quiet that you can hear the cycadas, crickets, deer crashing in the woods, and the turkeys gobble. Woodpeckers live in our bottom meadow and we regularly hear them chipping at the dead trees for a delicious breakfast of fresh bugs.

This morning there is a magical mist on the meadow between the house and the woods which form my southern boundry. It is in this meadow that the does live and the chicken coop is nestled. My potato bed and garden are in the edge of this meadow, so it is a very snuggly feeling to look out and see all this sweeping off to the south. The mist gave everything a feeling that the Irish in me relates with fairies and all things magic between this world and the next.

The dogs sleepily come to breakfast as do the cats. The does low softly, calling 'good morning' to me. Chickens sing their soft song as they slowly wake up and the rooster announces that dawn is nearly here.

I love this time of day because of the sense of promise. The day is fresh, shrouded as my meadow in the mist, wrapped in what Emily Dickinson called "possibility." Once I open my college email, once I get on campus, my day slips away. It is too busy for me. Meetings, students, classes, paperwork, and all the various things that fill the day keep me from even finding time to take a walk. Lunch is often grabbed between writing lab and club meetings. Often, even in the bathroom, a student will ask, "Is that you? I recognize your shoes."

And yet, between 5 and 6 a.m., my life is quiet. I sit with my friend, God, and we talk for a little bit. I savor my breakfast and day dream of quiet summer mornings, crisp fall mornings, promised snow days, and spring break. I build my castles in the air. And, until the sun melts the mist, my life is my own.