The Good-bye Chronicles Chapter 4: Dawn

July 14, 2010

5:00 a.m. I step out the door under a blanket of clouds. The scent of rain and creosote bush perfumes the air. I am surprised to hear a choir of Purple martins already singing the day awake. In the distance the lights of Tucson are strung along the horizon like illuminated rhinestones. The neighborhood is waking up and I watch as one car after another pulls out of their garage and heads down the street. Soon the sun will rise and this dim darkness will fade to a bright gray, but if the clouds do not break up I will not see the sun.

Sonoran Desert Toad 7-3-10 under the spigot

However, I am already feeling the effects of the steaminess from the pending Monsoon rain. This is the second time this week the clouds have gathered and we have been denied. We are still waiting for rain. The parched ground and our parched psyches all long for that sweet relief, but it has yet to come. The Sonoran Desert Toads are waiting to sing their wild mating songs. For a few weeks now they have been hanging out in my yard under the hose spigot and in my flower beds. At night they languish in the bird bath and soak up moisture, but this is not what they need to breed and reproduce. They need a downpour, an onslaught of rain, a flash flood to get their blood boiling and their reproductive glands inspired. But it has not happened, yet. Perhaps today will be the day.

I view each moment like this now as if it will be my last one here. I wonder if I will remember this intensity when I am in New England. Gus went for his job interview while my sister and my son were here. Now we are just waiting for an offer like the desert waits for rain. Will this be a new dawn for us? I bounce back and forth between emotions. I think of all the things I will get to do in New England, the places I will go. Then I think of all the things I have done here and the things I have yet to do, the places I have yet to go. How can I do it all? I want to.

As I have gotten older and we have traveled and moved around this country I realize more and more how much I love to travel. I want to see new places and experience new things. For me this desire is now amplified by my love of birds and birding. Since moving here to Sycamore Canyon, starting my blog, learning to eBird, and joining Tucson Audubon each trip I take, each place I go now has a new dimension added as I write and count the birds. Each place I visit is now accompanied by the list of birds I saw while I was there. Since moving here to Arizona I have seen 249 species of birds in this place, and I know there are so many more I have yet to see, but I am already looking forward to new birds in new places! I can only wonder if I will still feel this way when it is winter and there is a foot of snow on the ground!

Dawn in Sycamore Canyon 5-27-07

For this morning I have only one decision to make: Do I get dressed and go for a walk before it gets too hot, or do I stay inside and write while it is quiet and my creative juices are flowing? I think I’ll choose the Dawn.

Mt. Fagan Morning 5-24-07

The Good-bye Chronicles

My World Tuesday

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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