Rise vs. Set

“Harbor or ocean side?” The clerk asked. I was on the phone and had to make a quick decision. The answer is always the beach. After all, rooms couldn’t fetch much more per night if it wasn’t worth it.

“You definitely want ocean,” my husband said, though he wasn’t exactly sure where I was going or when.

“OK, ocean side,” I told the clerk. If I have to spend the money for the flight and the room, I might as well splurge on the view.

A morning person, I like to rise before the sun, drink my coffee in the dark, poke around, write. I don’t ever sleep later than 7:30, and most days I’m up before 6:00, even if I have nowhere to go. But the best part about morning—even better than strong coffee and serenity—is sunrise.

Sunrise. When I say the word, my heart says, “Oh!” I think of the color first, then the birds. Winter sunrises are more spectacular because you can watch it all through naked branches. In summer, the leaves cover the deep, entrenched color hidden at the horizon. Unless you’re on the east coast beach.

Sunrise begins with a tinge of purple in the western sky. My husband, working at the kitchen table, will call to me in the next room. “Better go look!” The chattering in the yard, the soothing white noise of birds, begins, and we grab our mugs open the front door, as if to invite a neighbor. By the second, the sky changes; the paint spreads and bleeds and drips and swirls; the rush-hour crows head into it; the squirrels grab a nut and perch themselves on a high limb.

I have seen unimaginable sunsets. There was the one at Point Mendocino on my first trip out west. The sun set in thick bands of hot pink, red, navy, and orange. I have seen the sun go down on Lago Maggiore. I have watched last light at the Cliffs of Mohr and Gay Head and the Olympic National Forest and a Portland beach and Seattle. I saw it behind German castles and Irish cows.

They don’t compare to sunrise out my front door. It’s over far too quickly, of course; what makes moments special is what makes them moments: their evanescence. But there’s something priceless left after a sunrise: an entire new day. The best sunset can do is provide the end punctuation—an exclamation point after a brilliant day. But every sunrise holds the promise that what follows will be spectacular. It isn’t always. But it forever brims with potential.

And sometimes a spectacular sunrise is all the fulfillment you need.