Are Your Ready For The Sunrise

FTLComm - Tisdale - Saturday, June 23, 2001

"Are you ready for Christmas?" Always the question was asked in the good spirits of the season and intended to illustrate the questioner's awareness of the season but this odd refrain always requires a response even though the questioner is less inclined to care about that response only that the question be made. "Are you ready for winter?" Now this one is more pointed and is a reality check between greeter and greetee that affirms the awareness of the seasonal change about to take place. Fascinating that we ask and are asked these questions, just as fascinating as we show our concern for others by asking how they are are and so often we are surprised at the response. This morning the over cast sky presented a red glow as sunrise began to develop a few minutes after four.

Camera in hand I went out and captured the picture above (actually a composite of two pictures) and the one at the top of the page. This was an impressive morning and exactly the sort of thing one wonders if they are "ready" for such an experience. What preparations have been taken to appreciate this morning? The dawn caught the main street devoid of traffic, even the semi grain haulers stop some time. The street is cast in the red glow of comic book lighting. Below we look South down the empty main street and note the rather ostentatious entrance way the Credit Union has been constructing for the past month.

Stopped on the North edge of town the houses glow in the morning light with a solid green of a healthy field in the foreground. Then looking toward the sunrise the golden orb blasts its way over North Steel's tank farm. Then below that we look back on the North side of the town as the sun sees it for the first time this new day.

A mile North and the morning light makes the Harvest Valley terminal flash two miles away with canola filling the foreground working its way toward the day when it will burst into yellow glory. Below the rising sun pierces a small stand of poplars and it is then, this is the moment that we realise we can never ever be "ready" for a scene of great beauty, it will always overpower our expectations, always be better than or imagination, always fill us with smile of satisfaction and delight that seems to stimulate the internal workings of our body,

topping it up with an added touch of warmth. No, we are not ready for the sunrise and may we never be so.

The variation in colour and light simply exceeded the camera's CCD and my efforts to solve the problem on the screen were pitiful. The highway in total shadow with the low angle was indeed blue and a deep shadow from the road cut a line on the rich green of a canola crop but the sky was a rosy blue, a rosy blue/gray and for that you will have to take my word. Below the sun passed through the slot between the horizon and the overcast

this morning's sunrise was not something anyone could prepare for, it just happened and will never be seen again. Each moment in our lives are like that, strung together, a ribbon of awareness, a river of moments, only to happen once, each one to be enjoyed, experienced and savoured. The time is 0422.