My Own Sunrise

Yeah, I missed the sunrise this morning. I was up at about 5:40, because my internal clock and neurotic state of mind always gets me up early. But I looked at the weather and it said cloudy and foggy. And if you just think for a second about watching a heavily obscured sunrise, it doesn't sound like a good idea. That's what I thought in my tired state of mind and turned off the alarm and went back to bed. But I know better than that. A sunrise has nothing to do with the sun. That's just pretty landscape. I'll share this with you since it's no good and I don't feel like anyone'll copy it. But if you do without giving me credit, I'll find you.


"It was our last night on the mountain. From the latrine nearest our campsite, we could look down through the trees and across the desert and see speckled lights from the home base and farther past that a great twinkling from the houses and car lots in Cimarron. It was kind of like a Monet painting in a video our Lit teacher had showed the class to culture us. A thousand separate lights coming together for something.

    The sun had set, dark was near and we decided to get up at four tomorrow morning to watch the sunrise before the final trek. Mr. O’Neal set his watch and all of us Scouts set the alarms on the phones we weren’t supposed to have. No one wanted to miss it.  But when we woke up, it was too dark to see any stars or the moon.

    We climbed up the ridge we could see the town from and waited for the clouds to clear off the quiet mountain. We all sat for a while with our camera in our laps. No one said much. A few yawns. Tyler sneezed because he was still sick. Zach slapped the bugs off his legs. And the whole damned place was silent otherwise. No crickets or big-eared deer rustling in the forest. There was no wind either. Just the sound of disappointment as Tony and Andrew headed back to their sleeping bags for a few extra hours of sleep.

    It was half past five. The sun would be up soon. We could identify the trees around us without our flashlights. Poplars of some sort. I wasn’t a greenery expert. I sat on my rock and prayed the clouds away. Aled and David headed farther up the ridge to the peak. It was another half mile trek and I didn’t feel like going. Zach and Tyler did and so the adults did too.

    I stayed on that ridge until they came down, cursing the early morning and lack of light and that the trip was almost over and Zach‘s stupid giggle that echoed down the mountain. I grabbed some pebbles and chucked them at a tree, hitting a branch instead of the trunk. When I was out of pebbles, I scooped more until the dirt around me had only softball-sized rocks. I wasn’t about to hurl those at anything.

    I guess I was pouting that I hadn’t seen the sunrise. It would’ve been great. You always hear how it’s a daily miracle and real pretty and relaxing and all that. Back in Springfield, it’s all ruined by the ambient light from Super Wal-Mart and car dealerships. So even if I got up in time to watch it over the cornfield, it wouldn’t be anything special. I’d never get a chance to see it from the mountains now. This was my last trip with Scouts and I hadn’t seen a good sunrise. I was either up working on breakfast or packing and didn’t enjoy it or I was sleeping.

    Alone, silently sulking, too tired to direct my thinking. A bird chirped. Just one short note. I couldn’t pick out where it had come from until another came. There were a few more from all around then some bugs joined in. It echoed along the ridge. The birds jammed to their own tunes, and the insects hummed along trying to keep a constant rhythm and there were a lot of breaks to breathe or turn the page of their sheet music or write down whatever brilliant melodies they had just belted out, and another would begin and the others would join in and the whole place got louder until it sounded like day time.

    Everything was still shadows and outlines, but I guess I got my sunrise.

    David and Zach came down in the middle of the concert, yakking and running the last slope so rocks slid over my ridge. David said I needed to see this. I tried to refuse politely so they’d leave me alone, but they insisted I come and I tried to explain why I wanted to sit there. They told me I was acting depressed and only by joining in would I get my therapy. So I just sat there and didn’t say anything until David said “You’re missing out” and climbed back up."






So that's my made up experience at Philmont, the last trip before I was officially done with scouts. And I could've had something similar today but I didn't think about it. I even wrote that last night.

The real experience was that I saw the sunset and we all took pictures and thought it was so pretty and I said it looked like a nuke went off. Then everyone went to the top to take pictures and have the adults take pictures of the scouts with the sun in the background and all the sons and dads went except me because I was angry with my dad. But I got to sit there and listen to the forest wake up and that was special for me. Not some nuke-ish light on the horizon.







-Cantwhistle

P.S. I might put up another post later today since this wasn't one of my ideas and if I don't double-time it I'm sure I'll forget about that list in lieu of current events.

Spring Break

Over spring break, I didn't have a working laptop and I wasn't about to pack up my desktop (which is what I'm usually on). My laptop worked for the first day (Saturday) but the screen went black when I was checking my email and no amount of ctrl alt deleting, restarting or swearing would fix it. It was still on and humming and I could see something on the screen but it might've just been burned into or something. I don't understand computer screens a whole lot, but I know our work computer has the icons burned into the screen so they always appear even over the current program but they're faded. And that's sort of what this looked like. I have a lot of stories (all started but few finished) that I want to get somehow so I think I'll try some trickery with hooking the RGB cable from my desktop to the laptop. The computer might be completely broken though. I really only need it to work for two days (I think that'll be enough time to transfer everything) but if it doesn't, it's no great loss. Most of the better stories I have in my vault (my memory) and only two or three were ever written to any great detail that I'd like to have them back. Those weren't good, but they took a lot of time. And I have one short story that I finished that I could enter in the school contest. It's not great, it's not even good. It's cute, it's amateur, a nice try, entertaining but it doesn't do a whole lot of characterization and the plot's a bit thin. I need to caricaturize the antagonist more and add some cuteness to the pup and some personality trait to the vet. It was about this woman coming to drop off her dog at a vet for euthanasia because he got big and barked too much. And I, as the narrator, am schlepping for the vet in the backroom declawing a cat and dealing with this bitchy woman. I think it's kind of like when people write about the death of a family member. Readers are so sympathetic that they can't tell you that technically the writing isn't that special.

But that's all of the blog entry I'm going to do. I want to get up early tomorrow before the sunrise to try and relax a little. My nerves are getting to me. I slept in 7 of the 10 days of break (the three being today, yesterday and Friday when my sister, her dogs and her boyfriend/new fiance were in town) but getting to bed at night was awful. I probably got seven hours of sleep each night I slept in. I'd go to bed early, like midnight or one but I wouldn't be able to sleep until 3 or 4. The only reason I stay up late is nerves like that.

Shit, I guess I added a bit more to the entry. But the rest will just be my next few blog ideas that I wanted to do over break. They're not in any order. If they were, I'd've numbered them.

-Running story (I need a team and a whiteboard like Dr. House to see if I actually like the idea)
-"Scholarly" writing
-Moby Dick
-Dragon Age 2 review
-Shaving
-Memory and recent problems with it
-Charlie Brown humor vs Will Ferrel Humor
-Losing weight
-My crush on my German professors and certain fantasies that I've had because of it (They're about as adult as fantasizing about giving her a high five)

-Cantwhistle

P.S. Anyone unfortunate enough to read this should use double contractions. (I'd've is my most common one. I think it's why people mistake "I would have" contracted as "I would've" as "I would of" when writing.)