Our chores begin at sun up

This morning’s dawn featured stratus clouds blanketing the ripened crops, bands of red, orange and purple layering each other just above the horizon, a waning crescent moon roughly thirty-five degrees high in the eastern sky, and one bright star just below the moon, off to the right. A punctuation mark! At least that’s the way it looks for the first few seconds. As the sun inches closer and closer to its entrance stage east, all the components shift. The constantly changing light at dawn is one of its most appealing qualities – a fitting reward for climbing out of a warm bed and stepping outside into crisp, damp air.

In the city, I never see the sun rising from its slumber. One reason, I suppose, is that cities lack discernable horizon; they also lack serenity, which is fundamental to enjoying daybreak. In the city, there’s always someone who’s up and out on the road ahead of you – ahead of the sun. Daybreak loses its meaning when people all around are well into their routines even before the sun. We were meant to wait for the sun, not render irrelevant it’s place in the daily cycle of life.

Here, though, I’m constantly climbing out of bed long before I would have to. It seems as if I can’t help myself. The day is breaking, after all, and I want to be a part of it from the very first moment. I want to see the purple sky transform into a red one. I want to watch the stars fade, knowing in fourteen hours or so, they’ll reappear over my head like a vision. I want to see the groves across the fields come into view as the clouds thin with the rising light.

Of course, rising to standing witness to the dawn instead of sleeping an extra hour or two, makes a country day longer than a city day. And the farm doesn’t close up shop on the weekend. There is plenty to do around here just to stay even. No, my day won’t offer many opportunities to rest. Still, I abandon my bed to greet the day. Soon, I’ll be toiling at something.

In the city, morning means routine that chips away at that 40-hour work week with the promise of leisure come week's end. In the country, dawn means each day arrives like a gift. The days are short. Get busy. Out here, I work harder. Out here, I think I come out ahead.