My favorite time of the day is sunrise and dawn.  The earth slowly turns out of the darkness of night and gradually there is light.  At first it’s barely perceptible but gingerly the black turns to shadow.  The sun nears the horizon and it’s light gets scattered above, bouncing off any clouds that are near giving them their own colors and hues.  Generally, not always, the daytime winds have subsided during the night and the air is calm – as if in anticipation of the dawn.  All the colors of the sunrise are reflected in the smoothness of the still lake.  The loons are long gone but as the light gets brighter I can hear the ducks and geese that have not yet headed south for winter.  They are gathering in larger flocks before they depart.  At this point everything pauses for a suspended moment.

And then the sun rises higher in the sky throwing it’s brightness all around, the wind picks up and riffles across the lake surface, the geese and ducks take flight, the squirrels start to scurry, and our human noise of activity echos throughout the area greeting another day.