A Gentle Morning

Dawn by Kathie 9-22-08 5:49 a.m. 52mm, 1/60 sec - F/4.5

Cricket songs and a hooting owl greet me as I step out the patio door in the predawn darkness. I’ve awakened early and after lying in bed for almost an hour decided to give up and get up. I’m not disappointed by this decision for it’s wonderfully peaceful outside. I take down the empty hummingbird feeder encrusted with splashes of dried nectar. The lesser long-nosed bats emptied it hours ago. I bring it into the house, clean and refill it, then set it aside to put out once the sun rises. I don’t know if the bats are gone for the night, but I’d like to sit outside without their company. I grab my steaming cup of Irish breakfast tea and relax into the cushion of a patio swivel chair.

From here I can view the sky in all directions. The outlines of my neighbor’s roofs and the dark edges of Mt. Fagan describe the line between earth and sky. Over head the half moon shines like a beacon still strong enough to cast moon shadows on the ground. Off in the desert a band of coyotes wails like banshees in the night. It is a haunting sound, yet somehow wild and peaceful all at the same time. Their cries carry me away, then set me down again in this desert place I now live in. A light wind brushes my face and causes the nearby flag to gently flap in a soothing rhythm.

Morning Tea by Kathie 9-22-08 6:51 a.m. 70mm, 1/320 sec - F/4.5

I snuggle my hands around my tea cup and spin my chair to view the starry sky. To the south Orion sails almost directly overhead in a charcoal sea. I watch the faint blinking light of a distant satellite as it makes its steady orbit east. I rotate my chair 180 degrees to see what the big dipper is doing. Its upended on its handle hanging over the Catalina Mountains with the two pointer stars on the end of the cup directing me to the north star in the handle of the little dipper. I am not an astronomer by anyone’s stretch of the imagination, but this little bit I know helps me enjoy the nighttime sky even more. The little dipper’s faint stars are almost lost in the glow of the Tucson city lights as its cup sinks lower in the sky. As night fades into day I think of how the stars will still be in their place but I will no longer see them as our morning star rises in the east and bathes the earth in its light. It is a gentle morning here in Sycamore Canyon on this first day of autumn and I am thankful to be awake to greet it.

Sunrise Ballerina by kathie 9-22-08, 6:42 a.m. 98mm, 1/500 sec - F/5.6

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