An Early Morning Sunrise On This Cool, Crisp, Now Fall Day

About a year ago I wrote about a west coast, early morning sunrise on a cool, crisp, now fall day. And so, in keeping with this, I thought I'd revisit the theme from this east side coast. My change of location does not necessarily mean a change of routine it seems. Though my east coast early morning sunrise starts out a bit differently.

Here in Massachusetts there is fog on the ground.

Sometimes, the mornings in California would offer up a fog that hung gently on the peaks of the mountains off in the distance from where my walk took me. But here, the fog nestles in against the field of grass that sits below the home I am renting for this fall in Massachusetts. The field is often filled with cows. Both grown and many babies graze along the fence and off into the distance. Just as often they break free of the wire that runs the perimeter of the field and I find cows eating the sweeter grass of my lawn. It is funny when they are outside of their fence. I wonder how they got here. I have yet to see them escape though I have seen them go back into the enclosure. They always do. Go back. They know it is their home. Just as this farmhouse is mine.

The fog is not here every morning. And neither are the cows. But the crispness and the coolness of this now fall welcomes me each morning. To me, this coolness feels like coldness. I am sure it is not that cold to someone who is used to this. But this coolness, I am not used to mornings like this. To me, it is cold. I am cold. Cold in that two-sweaters-and-a-hat-and-mittens-and-my-winter-boots kind of way.  But still I am up. With the sunrise. And my dog.
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We play ball. Each morning when we wake up with the cool, crisp and sometimes foggy sunrise. We play ball in that way that she always plays ball. That intense, this-is-work-this-is-my-job-in-this-moment kind of way. We play ball and we walk along the dirt road that is my driveway. My west coast walk was just  a walk and then the ball playing came later. But not here in Massachusetts. Here we combine the walk and the ball playing/working. As we wish a sweet good morning to the cows if they are here.

The cows. They are much safer than the coyotes that sometimes would join us on our west coast, early morning walks. The lack of them, the coyotes, is a huge thing for me. I walk/play ball on these east coast mornings without worrying. I walk, maybe a bit cold, but only my body is chilled. My heart, it is warm and worry free. 

I did not realize just how much I worried about the coyotes back in California. I did not realize how on high alert I was on my walks in the morning with Nava in the orange grove below our west coast home until I started on these early morning Massachusetts walks and found that I was just in them. 

There is an ease to my mornings here. A cold ease, but an ease nonetheless. I like this. Not thinking, not looking around, not wondering if something is lurking near to us. Something coyote-like that could hurt my dog.

Not having to notice that the many rabbits are running scared not from my dog but from another kind of canine that is very interested in mine. But only noticing that the cows are on the outside side of the fence, and that the fog is thicker and deeper than it was the day before, and that it is not quite as cold and so I need one less sweater and do not have to make sure to stand in those spaces on the dirt road where the early morning sun hits my face and warms me. 

And that the flowers that grow against the side of my home dance brightly in the morning light.