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A Hint of Promise

When some folks wake up with pale pastel colors just beginning to form on the eastern horizon, they groan and pull the covers over their head. Later in the day they will complain of insomnia and how they just cannot sleep the way they used to. For me, though, the pre-dawn is a time of great inspiration and promise, especially outdoors where spiritual signs of optimism abound for the early riser. I am thankful for this characteristic I have. It may be constitutional, but at least in part, it is due to my dog Tagg.

Our animals sleep with us. It is not a stable situation. I can picture how our nightly migrations across the bed would look in time-lapse photography. Though we start out in predetermined spots on the mattress, our nocturnal tango leaves us in a spaghetti of limbs and bedclothes each morning that, like the uniqueness of a fingerprint, is different from any previous morning arrangement.

At some point near the end of the sleep process each night, Tagg, our sixty-five pound dog by committee, begins to twitch, shutter, and jerk, as each canine synapse fires unloading shots of some brain chemical or other to her muscles. She pokes and jiggles me when she does this, which brings me into the twilight of consciousness. I call it the RDM stage of sleep, or the "Rapid Doggie Movement" stage. It sometimes signals the end of my slumber altogether.

That is why I was up so early this morning. A walk at sunrise sounded like a good idea. While strolling the greens I noticed a black vulture gliding close overhead. The scent of carrion in the wind must have brought it to such a low altitude. Its featherless, leathery head scanned the ground for breakfast. I stopped and watched with open mouth as its wing joints and tail worked the air currents with such miraculous unity of purpose. It considered me only briefly and then went on searching for something that could not walk away, as I would soon, into a new day.

A slight moisture in the air carried a rich, earthy aroma. Typical gorgeous desert morning. I turned toward the breeze and raised my nose to catch a good whiff. The sky was too bright for my morning eyes, so I scrunched them shut and drifted on a trail of fragrance.

Clouds had formed at a spot just above the mountains on the distant horizon to the west, and in the gap between the two, a rainbow of no more than twenty degrees arc drew my eyes as I opened them again. It was just a dab, as if God had dropped his paintbrush in this one portion of the canvas and then snatched it back up, leaving a streak of promising color in the gray of morning, a hint of divinity, and a gift for an early riser.

Peace.

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