We are early risers.  We’ve had to notify our local newspaper circulation department to please make us first on the delivery route.  Having become creatures of habit, we have our coffee and read the paper, while glancing at the weather channel, and this time of year, by the time we finish, the sun is rising from the ocean.  I like to tell people I have seen every sunrise of my life, which isn’t entirely true, but since occupying The Little Hacienda, 95% true.  We hit the beach for our morning walk, then it’s breakfast back at the house.

For a long time I took a photo of the sunrise every morning and posted it on the insidious  Facebook.  I have hundreds of sunrise photos, each one different. They were well-received, but since entering Facebook recovery, I don’t take as many shots, preferring now, with some exceptions, to have a more direct experience of this beautiful phenomenon, without the distraction of thinking about taking a shot, and the filter of the experience a camera provides.

I understand, and am fascinated by the temptation, however, and succumb often enough. Every morning, without exception, I see people taking pictures as the sun oozes out of the Atlantic.  You just want to preserve and share the moment.  I want to tell them, “Shoot the clouds; shoot the water; even the reflection in the sand. If you wait and try to get the sun directly, it doesn’t work.  It’s flat, uninteresting and washed out.”  But I don’t.  I get that you have to try.  And why is that? I think it’s deeper than just wanting to preserve something grand and beautiful.  I think it has to do with mystery.  We love mystery, and maybe a sunrise, in all its attendant glory, is one of the greatest of all mysteries.  It’s rebirth, isn’t it; it’s resurrection. It’s trying to get to the heart of the matter in the only way we can.  Close, but never quite grasping.

I have become especially fond of what the low angle of the light does in the first few minutes of sunrise.  I’ve talked about what it does inside the house.  On the beach it’s often more subtle- there’s so much more to take in, the pieces are hard to register- but the nearly horizontal light early makes for some spectacular images.  Gold through a wave, or caught in a splash; undulations; tracks of birds and crabs; grains of sand carved and monumental in their individuality; night herons stalking ghost crabs, every feather aglow.

And it all changes so fast.  It doesn’t get better or worse as the sun moves from orange to yellow to white, and more is illuminated, it just changes.  There’s no stopping it, and it’s altogether different the next morning. I love coming back up from water’s edge to climb the dune for home while the light is still at a low angle.  Everything you see is sharper than it will be all day, right before the Morning Glory closes.