Mostly Harmless: Sunrise obsessed

It's no secret that I haven't adapted well to the current government. By which I mean I hate this all with a fiery passion and beyond the horrors of what is happening to people, I am already in mourning for our planet because we had a small window to act and I fear it's gone. However, the cats need someone to take care of them so for the time being, I have been trying to find a way to survive the Existential Dread from being a permanent resident in the Pit of Despair

One of my coping mechanisms is running. But as a thoroughly heat intolerant person, summer has always been tough to keep up the runs. This past summer I decided to start running before dawn. Those early alarms HURT but an unexpected bonus was the glory of the predawn light and sunrises.

Talk about a reward for waking up early.

Finding anything to take joy in is a real win at this point and enjoying the beauty of this blue and green rock while it can still support mammalian life seems especially poignant. Erego, I immediately became obsessed with sunrises.

It doesn't hurt that my normal running loop is a park near my house with a lake that gets amazing reflections off the water.

I started taking a photo of the sun from the halfway point of my run, whether that was predawn, at sunrise, or later. Somewhere along the way, the excitement grew for each of these early runs. The park was so quiet, I often saw one or more of the resident coyotes - which are absolutely gorgeous, and tons of birds.

The color gradient and reflection on this day was amazing

Eventually my brain was like....hey sunsets around here are good too

But that will probably be another post.

After stopping for a quick photo for months, I realized that some sunrises are worth a longer pause. Who cares if my heart rate slows, who cares if my run isn't optimized. News flash, I am a very casual jogger and my runs aren't optimized anyways. Hit pause on the damn watch and observe the most beautiful colors in the sky you stupid bitch. And so I did

And since nothing is worth doing without overthinking and planning it, I started looking up sunrise times and structuring my run times to try and optimize the lighting

In summer and fall, the best light seemed to actually be about 20-30 minutes before dawn. So caculating how long it took me to run to the lake, how long it took me to get dressed and out the door....this all started governing my alarm time so I could try and get the best lighting.

Look I am my own worst overthinking enemy often enough, but in this case, it paid off.

5:57am

6:01am It changes FAST

Like any obsession, there are pitfalls. I started to fear missing a good sunrise. I would actually be in a bad mood if the sunrise was just "normal" and not spectacular.

My brain requires constant fucking supervision and I had to work to reframe it: that there is no bad sunrise, and that i was still out doing the best for myself even with less color and also the reflections, the birds, the planet still functioning for us silly little mammals, it all matters even when the sky isn't fully on fire for me.

That even if I don't get the perfect photo because I am on a different trail doing a long run,
I still get to see THIS

I started paying attention to the sun moving across the horizon as the weeks passed

I started noticing some of the different species of birds that either live or pass through the park

I started setting an alarm on non-running days so I could drive over and observe the sunrise on those days too

On those mornings, when my schedule allows, I will try and stay for as long as possible, watching the color progression as the light changes

I have become a much stronger runner too, probably because I almost never skip a run these days

One of the most magical days was when the full moon was setting during sunrise. I think I took 100 pictures and kept getting pulled between the sunrise and the moonset.