Stillness Before Dawn

I typically take my morning walks in the woods early, when many are either just waking up or having breakfast. On a normal day, I’m out of the car and hitting the trail with my dog, Bernard, around 6:35ish. Some days I’m a little earlier, some a little later. But as Autumn progresses and the daylight hours get squeezed out by the migrating sun, it is darker and darker when I enter the woods, sometimes before the sun has actually risen. The forest canopy looms heavy in the darkness, the trail lighted faintly by the slowly awakening sky. I’ve noticed a different change that comes with the lingering darkness in the morning; stillness. When I enter the woods before dawn, there is a quiet and a stillness that sits heavy in the air. A few leaves rattle here and there in a gentle breeze, when there is one, but the wildlife is still quiet, no birds are chirping, no chipmunks or squirrels skittering around through the leaves, even the deer are more quiet than normal.

In this quiet and stillness, I struggle to hear even cars on distant roads. There seems to be a pause in the moments leading up to dawn that commands silence and stillness from everything. My ears strain to pick up sounds, but mostly it is just the crunch of leaves under my feet as I tread down the trial. Its almost as if I’m intruding on a church gone quiet, the silence before Mass begins, and I try to keep even my footsteps feather soft and devoid of sound. There is a richness that comes with the silence in the cathedral of the trees, their leaves beginning to turn, beginning to let more filtered light hit the forest floor. And still I plod on, listening and watching, waiting for the forest to wake up.

It doesn’t take long before woodpeckers start hammering away, squirrels rustle through the leaves in search of acorns, and hawks begin screeching. The silence is what’s settling, the calm before the chaos of, the time when thought flows freely without the din to distract. People ask why I get up so early and head into the woods. Its to escape the noise of humanity and sit with the silence of nature before dawn. To see the sun crest and fire the trees with light is an energizing feeling. I feel I could keep walking in those moments, keep placing one foot in front of the other, without care, without interruption. And then I get back to the car and get on with my day. But that silence in the woods carries me forward, helps me make it through the day.