I’m sure I am a morning person in Acadia National Park
Written on May 14th.
Our alarm went off at four this morning. Old Pine by Ben Howard. A gentle, lengthy instrumental intro — breathtaking guitar — juxtaposed with incessant, intermittent vibrations from Sean’s phone.
When I first force my arms out of the covers, I’m not sure I am a morning person. When we reach the road to Cadillac Mountain’s summit only to find it closed (nevermind that it was just open two nights ago, we chased the northern lights up its slope with dozens of other campers, the repaving was finished) I am even less sure. When we almost hit a deer who leaps in front of our three-ton van with the fervor of an acrobat giving one final performance, I am thinking that actually it would be much better to be in bed right now.
But then we find a roughly-east-facing overlook. There are only two other cars there, a few friends wrapped in blankets, sharing snacks, wearing beanies just above tired eyes. We secure our own layers of warmth. Scout jumps on the rock between us the instant we set our blanket down. Sean checks the time, surveys the skyline, dips back inside to make coffee. He delivers it to me a few minutes later topped with whipped cream. (I share a lick with Scout, of course.) I won’t pretend it doesn’t please me to see the girl to our right nudge her friend, whisper something about how nice it is to be handed a warm mug at such a peaceful spot.
And slowly the world keeps lighting up. The sun lends its color to everything for twenty minutes before cresting the horizon and absorbing the reds back into itself, leaving white clouds and dark gray mounds of coastal mountain in its wake, and I remember why I am a morning person.
The thought recalls a note buried in my phone’s archives from 2018, typed in the mountains of Thailand hours remote from Chiang Mai, at the elephant sanctuary I called home for a summer.
“I’m not really a morning person when the roosters first start to call or my alarm goes off. And I’m not really a morning person when I’m fumbling around for my glasses, tripping into the wall while forcing socks onto tired feet.
I’m not a morning person when my eyes feel so heavy that all I want to do is close them for another eternity — but when I make my feet take me there and I open wide to look over the valley, sometimes the world smuggles me a few pieces of blue sky that are so rare in rainy season.
Sometimes the still air is broken by a semblance of a real breeze. Sometimes the moon lingers just for me to say hello an extra minute… and it’s that moment that I’m a morning person.”
The day stretches before me now, almost endless in sprawl and possibility. We were wide awake by 5:06 when the first rays of sunlight dappled Scout’s fur. Done with a rocky hike two hours later. Sitting down to write, breakfast eaten and coffee sipped and bodies stretched, just after eight.
A four-a.m. alarm seems a small price for such eternity. All we have is time. Time is all we have. And the only way to spend it is together.
