EARLY TO RISE…

I didn’t used to be a morning person. Certainly not an early-morning person. Though not much of a sleeper, either. Stay up ‘til three or four a.m., hit the sack for a few hours, get up mid-morning and go. That was my way, my natural circadian rhythm. Four or five hours of sleep, maximum. Oh, I arose early when I had to—even before dawn, if necessary—for things such as fishing trips, squirrels hunts, or long, single-day road trips where I intended to cover 1000 miles or so before stopping; though just as often, I’d launch these marathon drives the evening before, or even the noon before, drive all night, and meet the dawn somewhere on the road between Ohio and, say, Key West. All-nighters were always easy; it was getting to sleep I found difficult. When my father and I fished Lake Erie, I simply stayed up, drove us to the big lake so we arrived at dawn, fished all day, drove us back home, stayed up until well after midnight…then, went to bed. Going 36–48 hours without sleep was nothing. Give me five hours of sleep every twenty-four and I was fine; reduce that to four hours and about every two or three weeks I’d need a couple extra hours one night to sort of “fill up my charge.” Not so much an insomniac, rather a person apparently requiring less sleep. I still don’t need—or manage—more than five or six hours of sleep nightly…but I want to emphasize that word nightly. A few years ago, something inside me changed. Post-midnight habits faded. I found myself going to bed by 11:30 p.m., sometimes earlier! After decades of being nocturnal I became diurnal. Instead of awakening in the morning, I began preceding the dawn. Now I actually see the sunrise on a daily basis. Amazing. What caused this fundamental switch? I have no idea—it just happened…and virtually overnight. I went from being a night owl to a sunrise aficionado. Friends and family were astonished. And as silly as it likely sounds to most of you, for me it was like discovering a whole new world—or at least a side of my personal world that had been heretofore hidden and unfamiliar. Nowadays, find myself waiting on daylight. I make my pot of coffee or tea, check email, let Moon the dog out for her morning constitutional. Usually I step outside myself to check the sky—look up at the stars twinkling overhead, or perhaps watch the moon slip through the tangle of sycamore limbs as it pours silvery light onto the river’s moving mirror. Every so often I glance to the east to see if that first subtle lifting of night can be detected. Sometimes there’s just the faintest streak of gold or rosé, a hairline crack in the wall of black, telling me the darkness has been broken and a new day is leaking out. The one thing I miss from my old ways are the midnight rambles. I used to regularly go for long walks in woods and fields, following trails and pathways, or just forging along as best I could. I enjoyed being by myself in these wild areas when the world was hushed. I have good night vision, so while I carried a flashlight, I almost never turned it on—preferring instead to allow my sight to adjust to the available light. You’d be surprised how well you can actually see sometimes. I’ve watched rabbits dance in the moonlight and foxes in a short-grass prairie pounce on mice and voles. So what have I learned? Well, that dawns are indeed for early birds—singing, sleepily at first, as if they need to tune up and find their voice—then louder. Many begin arriving at the feeders while it is still more dark than light. I hear others fluttering overhead long before I can distinguish more than their passing silhouettes. Then the geese are apt to start honking…which usually sets off the blue heron. The cacophony probably gets every small creature along the riverbank stirring. About this same time the squirrels appear. There’s a hole in the top of the huge sycamore by the drive that usually holds four or five gray squirrels, and one after another they pop out and begin following their tree-top pathways toward the cottage and the ration of seeds and cracked corn they know awaits. That’s my signal to call my dog and head back inside, allow them to enjoy their breakfast. I never thought I'd say this—but I really like mornings.