Morning Person

I hope I don’t contradict a previous post, but I’m a little tired and I’ll beg forgiveness rather than do the research.

I’m going to share a secret that I’ve tried to keep hidden as far back as I can remember. My caginess with this particular piece of knowledge went so far that I even had myself fooled for quite awhile.

Morning Rainbow - Lowden, IA

I’m a morning person.

There, I’ve said it, and it feels good to finally get it out in the open.

I know that being a morning person is not necessarily a popular approach in our culture.  There are meme after meme after meme commenting on coffee or time or some other way to kick start the morning. There are mugs and shirts and hats and tee shirts all warning others not to approach until a person’s had time to get rolling.

I actually like the morning because that’s when I have the most energy. The day is fresh and young and with the passing of night, it seems imbued with almost limitless possibilities.

This is especially true at this point in the walk. Now I’m not gonna say that the morning is fresh and crisp. Mornings of late have been humid steamy affairs, but let’s face it….the temperatures and humidity aren’t going to get any more conducive to walking then they are in the morning. It reminds me a little of Navy Dive School in Panama City, FL where eighty-five degrees and sixty percent humidity at six thirty in the morning was as cool as it was going to get.

My legs and back are fresh, and the pack just doesn’t seem that heavy. The grips on my trek poles are dry and supple rather than slimy and slick with the afternoon palm sweat that’s just around the corner. Twenty or twenty-five miles doesn’t sound too difficult in the morning. That spring in your step that makes you believe this fallacy, but it will not survive very long as the sun makes its steady climb to its zenith. Still, in the morning anything seems possible.

Today, the thunderstorms that ushered in crashing rain and lightning that lit up the sky last night had passed. In their wake, as the sun peaked up over the eastern horizon, a full rainbow winked from the west. This morning, anything was possible. The rainbow was a sign from the Universe that the time to slog westward had arrived, and I’m grateful I was up and around to see it.