June 1st and the weather has changed from rain and cool temps to sunshine and warmth. I ran yesterday morning in shorts and a wicking t-shirt, and rued the moment that I left the house without arm warmers. Today, I’m happy as a clam in shorts and a t-shirt, sitting in the sun soaking up a year’s worth of Vitamin D on my sun-deprived face.
My love affair with the sun is not new. I’ve worshipped the sun since the day I was born and my circadian rhythm is finely tuned to the nuances of the seasons. When the world starts to brighten at the beginning of each new day my body relaxes into excitement at the hope. When darkness falls, my mood shifts and I settle into the cave of my soul.
Dawn is always my favorite time of day though, no matter what the season. Even when I’m tired or have a stressful day ahead of me, I’m glad to see the dawn and light of day.
The first poem I ever memorized talks about dawn and the metaphor of the new day; it’s called “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, and was published in “The Outsider’s” by S.E. Hinton.
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
In the book 16-year-old Johnny is contemplating the poem as he lies in a hospital bed with burns over much of his body and a broken back. He talks to his friend Pony Boy about the poem and likens dawn to childhood, where everything is new and exciting, full of possibilities. “Then leaf subsides to leaf…” – children grow up and stop being so excited about the world. It’s predictable and has lost its newness. People become jaded in the daylight of their lives. The world doesn’t look exciting; it’s busy and we stop noticing the “gold” of the light and life in general.
Another of my favorite authors, Reg Saner, wrote a book called “The Dawn Collector”. He rises before dawn each day and hikes up the mountain, collecting memories of new beginnings instead of watching sunsets, the demise of the day. He says that he’s seen enough endings to last a lifetime; he’d rather witness newness and potential in every moment and collect those nuggets, to bring out and examine later.
The quality of light is different throughout the day, just as the quality of my energy is morphs through the course of the day. In the morning I’m a new person, excited about possibilities and a day unexplored. As the hours march forward I settle into a tempo and allow the momentum of the day to carry me. Sometimes there are clouds in the sky and in my energy, and those pass overhead and through me as little bumps in the road.
At the end of the day I’m tired. I’ve traveled far both physically and emotionally. The Earth has rotated through half its cycle and the sunlight has changed. The day has ended. I enter a quiet phase, a reflection phases, and rest.
On a smaller level, my running has the same cyclical rhythm. The beginning of each run is new and different, and I never know how it will end up. Once I warm up I leave the “dawn” of the run, and enter a daylight phase that will carry me through the remainder of the miles. Sometimes those miles are difficult, sometimes easy, but I never know how it’s going to look when I first begin.
The sunset of the run comes when I’ve expended my energy and am slowing down. I’ve traveled far and seen a lot, and then it’s time to slow down and rest. The activity allows for a calmness to occur, and I can finally rest, sated in my energetic output.
