If you’ve been paying attention, you may notice that my timestamps tend to be before six am. Is this because I have to write before I go to work or a clever manipulation of the schedule option in WordPress? In most cases, no. I choose to write before the world wakes, because that is when the words flow best. In the summer, I enjoyed early dawn light casting a blue glow over the world outside. Now that it is fall the world is dark. It remains dark like this for the few hours that I write. Sometimes, the moon is still out, spreading its own splash of color over the ground.

Yesterday, I woke on schedule ready to write words into the silence of the world around me. The day was as I like my fall mornings best, gray and dark, but with the fingers of dawn cresting over the hillside. The rain was pounding down on the skylights, a sound I have associated since childhood with the warm comfort of the indoors. The noise always takes me back to times in my mother’s kitchen with Kody. In the fall, we’d often be up early. He’d drink his coffee at one end of the counter, while I fed my mother’s dog.

When the pleasant sound of the rain on the skylights appeared, he’d always glance at me with that half grin. Running in the rain was a constant with him and dawn was no exception. In the mornings, we’d go out, the malamute padding behind us to greet the fall rain. Since the dog who loved snowy mornings and sunny morning, hated the rainy ones, sometimes running in the rain was the only way to coax her off the porch.

Together, we’d bound through the forest, unable to see where we were going. Slapped by damp sticks and leaves, the smell of the wet pine needles would wash over us. Eventually, we’d run out of breath and stop. Under the forest canopy, it is often dry even when the rain has been falling since the night before. Surrounded by darkness and the drip drop of rain on leaves, we’d stand close together. Kody would wrap me up in his arms so I could feel the heat of his breath and hear the pounding of his heart, in the moment before the world wakes.

On fall mornings, the fresh smell of rain on pine needles often takes me back to those perfect fleeting moments. Moments wrapped up in adrenaline and the promise of the dawn. There is no better way to start a morning than in that time before the world wakes. It is a feeling of aloneness and togetherness that is a challenge to understand, but a delight to experience.