Images and words by Jim Baldwin.

We all have our addictions, I’m told. One of mine is sunrise.

My bedroom window faces east. Hints of pink seep through, around the edges of the shade. It is 5:45 AM.

I run for my clothes, left out the night before.  Throw on a hoodie and pants.  Fly downstairs, slip into boots (no time for socks), grab my phone and go quickly out the back door. 

I don’t want to miss the show.

It’s like standing behind a painter, looking over his shoulder to watch him work, slowly, painstakingly. But this painter works on a much broader canvas and works faster.  This time of year as the sun moves more directly overhead, the painter’s vast canvas can change dramatically in seconds.

Painting on the clouds, the painter starts with fuzzy pink, deep blues in the background.  In seconds the pinks begin to change shape and shift to orange.  Soon the oranges are followed by yellow.  The show happens on the huge sky canvas and is repeated, instant replay, on the pond below.

It is most colorful and quiet in those moments before the source of light appears, the only sound the convoluted song of a goldfinch.  How can such a tiny being make such piercing sounds?  

There is a lone walker.  We meet every morning at the same time in the same place and exchange one word, “Morning.” Each of us has no idea who the other is. The quiet and the show are sacred.

The progression of images below, from April 27:

Every morning, morning after morning, the painting is different.  A new day.  Colorful confirmations of the infinite.  

Is that hope I feel?