Midwestern prairie strikes me inconsolably barren when I first visit: vast swaths of flat earth, featureless corn fields, incessant wind, brutal heat. Over time, however, I discover pink shrub roses and black eyed Susans, Indian paintbrush and killdeer that feign injury to distract interlopers from their nest. Nights offer star-crazed skies and the thrill of yipping coyotes; Fall transforms vibrant green into Van Gogh gold. Especially I love the spacious, uninterrupted sky that contains and carries my contemplative nature as easily as it holds the song of wind-swept cottonwood. Visit by visit, I fall in love with prairie.
Discouraged
My day job often looks like those early visits to the prairie—barren and featureless. Years earlier I make a decision to stay with the job, believing its difficulties work on me in transformative ways. But in past weeks I feel lost and discouraged. Difficult questions weigh heavily. Do I meet the challenges presented? Am I choosing wisely? What is the meaning of my life?
As summer solstice approaches, I make a decision to pack-up my persistent angst and head to the prairie.
Upon arrival I throw myself into admiring flowers, inspecting trees, sketching landscapes and playing in an empty grain bin where sound ricochets wildly off circular steel walls. Still, challenging questions remain. When mosquitoes and cloud-cover dominate a sunset walk, I retreat, discouraged, to an indoor sleeping room. My plan is to rise early and watch the solstice sunrise.
Glory all around
Near four o’clock, my eyes flutter open. Instantly awake I walk outdoors—and gasp. Gone is the murky overcast of evening, in its place a cloudless sky spattered with a million stars. Air is pregnant with moisture and grass pearled in dew. I take my place in a chair set out the evening before, greeted by gentle chatter of tree swallows diving for a pre-dawn meal.
Prairie offers an unobstructed view of the eastern horizon where a hint of light wedges upward. As darkness lifts, spectacular blues and vibrant pinks seep and stain the sky. Languid yellows and pearly whites follow, pushing and spreading with the slow-rising sun.
More time passes and my attention shifts from the celestial palette to a quickening in and around my body. Its visceral quality unseats me and I spring to my feet eager and expectant. As light increases so does the quickening I feel, until, at last, the sun crowns.
I struggle to describe what happens next, except to say I fill with a peculiar sense the sun has come for me, and sees me, and my attention and admiration are pleasing to it, and its arrival is important, and my noticing is important, and I must live—just live!—and not hesitate, that life will not be denied, that I need not worry, and the sun’s radiance is for me—to benefit me—and I am deserving.
Infused with jubilance and joy, exuberance and energy, I watch as dawn completes its march into day. Empty of troubling questions and filled with ten thousand watts of wonder, I face the day, devotion renewed.
1 thought on “Solstice sunrise”
I am there, too. Moving.