Early morning
Early morning has always been my favourite time of the day and yet nowadays it is the time I am least likely to see. I don’t always sleep in that late, it is just I like to stay in bed until I am really ready to be up.
The books arrived yesterday and this morning we needed to take half of them up to the airport in Kaitaia for their journey to the Great Barrier Island, where Sarah, who illustrated them, lives. We were told the airport opened at 6am, with the plane leaving at 6.50. As the airport was already shut for the day when the books arrived, we needed to set the alarm and set off shortly before six for the half-hour journey, this morning.
We were treated to the last of the magnificent moon as it bade us farewell, at the same time, the sun rising on the opposite horizon. When I am travelling in the early morning, I always see plenty of photo opportunities, and this morning was no exception. A slight mist added a touch of mystique to the surroundings and there were plenty of trees silhouetted against the sun that would have made beautiful shots. But as is usual, when I am travelling early morning, I am going somewhere, with no time to stop. On the return journey, the sun was too high and those earlier potential pics were now gone.
But there is something about early morning that tugs at my heart. I think I may have written about this once before. There seems to be so much beauty and a special feel that one does not get at any other time of the day. I have so many memories of early mornings from the past and the beauty that this time has brought to me, particularly the stunning sunrises, the smells, the cool air and the bird song, when I could hear it. And early morning often meant some kind of journey, whether it was by car or on foot. I remember the times we used to rise early while staying at the beach, to catch the low tide to allow us to get around the rocks. Sometimes it was just for fishing, at other times for exploring. Sometimes we walked for miles. I was fit back in those days.
There were often treasures on such journeys as well, a washed-up glass buoy, or special shells. We never returned from any journey empty-handed. Then there were the treks from home. There was a large bluff at the back of our farm in a huge area of native bush. We walked to that a few times. I remember my fascination at seeing my first giant earth worm and the beautiful king ferns or the large fossil oyster shells set in the limestone rocks. And in the opposite direction were the caves, one full of magnificent glow worms with big fat eels that lived in the lake at the centre of it. We caught some of these, using the biggest shark hooks we had, along with a large chunk of mutton shank – the days before that meat became fashionable for eating.
And of course, rising for school meant greeting the early day, as we had to be at the bus stop at 7.30, and that was a mile or two away. We were always taken by car in the morning, but often walked home in the afternoons, in the days before the bus brought us all the way home to the gate.
It is funny how one little incident can create so much nostalgia. My Hawaiian story, for our writing group get-together this afternoon, did the same thing. I was so full of excitement back in those days. My life seemed it had so much potential. It was certainly more exciting looking forward than it is looking back. The dreariness wasn’t there then. But that is another story altogether.