A country day dawns
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
There aren't many mornings that I am up at dawn. I usually am in bed at midnight and so my morning get-up-time is eight hours later, however this week it's something different. We have our bed and breakfast and guest house filled with railroaders who rise with the dawn. And being the good and cheerful innkeepers that we are, we send them off for their day on the railroad with something warm in their tummies.
Dawn is a beautiful time of day. It's quietly calm in Ramona at dawn. There's a pink tinge on the horizon, while the sky above my head is still cobalt black. There are stars out at dawn, albeit in a different place than I viewed them the previous night.
At dawn, there is no sound in town, once the railroad trucks have lumbered off to their destination. Even the dogs are silent. This morning, there were no birds singing. I could hear cows lowing softly in the distance. "Whose cows?" I wondered, "so close to town."
As I walked to my office with a steaming cup of coffee in my hand, I savored a country dawn.
Just a few weeks ago I experienced dawn in the city, again. Even with the sun coming up over the ocean horizon, glazing the high-rise hotels in gold, I could not say it was a beautiful time of day. Dawn in the city is restless and noisy with the hum of traffic starting all over again and the incessant beeping of service trucks as they back into place to load and unload. Give me a country dawn, any day!
I viewed my neighborhood as I passed along D Street in Ramona. David was long gone to work. He rises well before dawn to commute to his job. Tony was still snug in his bed, only a night light on in the front room. The Thompsons' house had the porch light on, as did Jim's next door, but the interior of their houses were dark and quiet.
There's a faint tinge of smoke in the air as I walk familiar streets. Someone has a woodstove burning. "It must be Angel," I think to myself and look in the direction of her house and smile. Her Christmas lights are on, shining through the bare branches of trees that frame the view one block over.
The street is clear. Even the cats aren't out as yet to find their morning fare. The post office is still locked — they are the early birds in town but I am even earlier this morning on this rare occurrence that I am up at dawn.
And now the sky is gray and the horizon gleams pink and gold. I used to be able to hear Tim's truck pull out of his driveway six blocks away from my house, but he got a different truck with a motor that purrs instead of rumbling, and I no longer know the moment of his departure.
"So what was it like?" asked Tooltime Tim last night, "to be up at dawn?" He wants to know if it has toughened us up, if getting up was as hard on us as it is on him, because he's up every morning, six days a week, at this very time of day.
Soon the children will be filtering down the street to meet the school bus. All too soon the dogs in town will become alert to any unusual movement and begin to bark. In another half hour, Ramona residents will eagerly come to the post office to get their mail, catching up on the latest news, delivering their morning greetings. This day in Ramona will have officially begun. It's a new day with renewed possibilities.
But for now, it's dawn, on another day in the country.
