Sunrise, Interrupted

"Shrink!" The loudly whispered word startled me in the dark hallway. My nickname was familiar, but  hearing it hissed in the predawn hours was a little unsettling.

"What?" I said into the darkness, not sure which of my sons I was addressing.

"Want to go shoot the sunrise?"

Ah, it was Dylan, the older. Of course, it was. The sun was not yet up, which means that of course, the younger son was not up either. He likes to prolong his sleep as long as possible. Dylan and I are light sleepers, and welcome the early morning hours.

"Of course, I do. I'll hurry and get ready." One of the blessings of being a low-maintenance kind of gal is that I can be ready in a moment's notice. I sent off a hurried text to Chuck, brushed my teeth, and threw on some shorts and a shirt. I think I brushed my hair. Maybe.

Dylan already had coffee waiting for me, and was loading our gear in the car. That guy is amazing, I tell ya. We spoke in hushed tones to let his wife and Bridger sleep. It wasn't long before we were heading west above Saint George to shoot the eastern sky.

Dylan and I are both pretty new to photography, and I was wishing my husband, the veteran shooter, were with us. After watching the night sky turn from black to grey to a soft blue, and noticing the hints of peach and pink on the distant horizon, neither one of us were very satisfied with what we were seeing through our lens. We downed the rest of our coffee, and packed up the tripods and cameras.

"Sorry we didn't do better," I said.

"Ah, it's okay. It was a good excuse to get up early and spend some time with you." That boy knows how to make his mama's heart happy.

As we were driving around a nearby neighborhood, Dylan pointed out some of his clients' homes. Then we noticed the sky was glowing. We were actually missing the sunrise! We sped back up the hill, slid to a stop in the loose gravel on the side of the road, and hurriedly grabbed our gear to set up again. I used the top of the car as a makeshift tripod, not wanting to waste any more time.

"You missed it!" said an old guy sitting on a rock on the edge of the overlook. The sun had just peeked over the distant mountain. Well, we might have missed the first glimpse of the sun, but we weren't going to miss the rest of it arguing with a pessimist on a rock.

As it turns out, we had a great time, playing with the settings on our cameras, and getting a few decent shots.

"I feel kind of silly that we left before the sun was actually up," I said. "DUH. I was assuming since the colors had dulled to a bland sky, we'd missed the colors for the day. Boy, was I wrong."

We had a good laugh, and went home to see what we'd gotten. Even if we'd totally missed the sunrise, the time with Dylan was priceless. The pictures were simply a bonus of that memorable morning.