The Pre Dawn Experience

There is something energizing about being out and about at sunrise, alone, when the rest of the world has not yet started to stir. For a person from New York or other similar cities, so much of living takes place in small groups or among crowds of people and vehicles that their absence is at once, a noticeably stark experience of difference yet remarkably refreshing and enjoyable. Solitude is an underrated condition.

It was that time in my life when I lived in one state and held a job at a great distance in another. Monday mornings through Friday afternoon were spent in New York and Friday evenings through Sundays I was home with my family in Connecticut. Every Monday I was up by 4:30 A.M. and on the road by 5:15. My immediate neighborhood and the surrounding streets were virtually vacant and the uncrowded highway was as inviting as a desirable restaurant without a waiting list. 

Driving in the darkness with only the subdued green luminous colors on the dashboard and the vivid headlights to penetrate the surrounding night is so different than daylight driving. At night you feel protectively packaged against the cold, the wind and whatever other mysteries are out there in the dark.

Then, as the commute progresses the gradually rising sun markedly changes the once blackened interior of the car which, up to then, had provided a cloak of invisibility, from the outside, but now starts to absorb and reflect that burgeoning orange glow thus bringing you out of the shadows and into view. 

The car radio plays a special role in a darkened vehicle. It can provide instantaneous company, if and when you need it, musical comfort when your thoughts become troublesome or talk radio when you need to change the subjects being debated between your Id and Ego.

I hated having to get up that early, until I stepped out the door into those sights and sounds and exposure to that version of the unheated, unlit, outdoors that can only be discerned before dawn.