I woke up early to chase the dawn. Beneath the pines, the darkness lay deep, but outside the shadow the moon turned the world to silver. The night beckoned, and so I raced through it, my breath panting out in white mist in the frigid cold of the early hours. It froze in the air and turned my beard to ice, melting and freezing again as I breathed.

I surged ahead, my legs churning up the shallow snow, the spikes on my feet tinkling in the night. The moon was so bright it turned the darkest hours of the night into a gloomy twilight. I stopped moving, stopped making noise, and turned off my headlamp.

Listening In The Dark

My eyes adjusted to the murk of the forest and I let the forest grow silent around me. I strained to hear, to listen to the sounds of the wood, but there was nothing but the cold to keep me company. Beneath my layers, the sweat on my skin grew cold, and a shiver worked its way across my flesh.

For a moment it was hard to tell if the shiver was from the lack of sound, or the cold itself.

I let the moment settle and stopped trying to hear what was around me.

Slowly, sounds began to trickle to my ears from the silver and shadows of the night. Water gurgled downhill beneath the ice of a stream, wood creaked as trees swayed for warmth in the chill, snow whispered to earth from a nearby tree. In the gloom, everything was possible, and as nature returned in soft sound, I felt like I was going to see wood nymphs flit between the trees.

The less I listened the more I heard.

Sunrise on Mountain Greylock

I pushed on until I was truly racing the dawn. Before I summited the mountain, the distant sky had begun to glow with color, so I ran, the spikes on my feet punching into the ice and snow. My heart pounded and my skin was burning to the touch.

My veins flushed with excitement, this was going to be something beyond words.

To the east the sky began to wake up, burning away the haze of sleep and foggy thoughts above the Berkshires. In the constant howl of the wind, and the snap of my shutter, the rest of the world was shut away.

All that mattered, all that remained, was that sunrise burning across the horizon.

Summit Sunrise and Quiet Thoughts

It’s moments like these when you stop listening and start dreaming. The sounds of the world dance around your head, just out of reach but always there. I start to think of home, and what home means, I start to think of noise and its absence, I start to dream of places I’ve never been and people I’ve never met.

I start to wonder if I’m listening too much, or just not at all.

I search for the balance as I chase the dawn, still searching even after I’ve caught it.

On mornings of orange and gold, the less I listen, the more I find that I have many more races to run before I find what I’m looking for.