Written before sunrise

I wake up early by habit and by nature, using no alarm. In part this is because I turn in early as well, but in truth I've just never had much aptitude for sleep, tossing and turning and waking up multiple times, and the quiet early morning hours are my most productive time of day. I also have a prejudice against using artificial light in the morning, which means, by this time of year, that I'm generally waking up during the period of what is called astronomical twilight and that I get out of bed during the phase known as nautical twilight, with an hour or so still to go before the sun actually rises. If I put up the window shades a bit there's enough moonlight and ambient light to find my clothes in, and I press the on button on my phone to give me enough light to make my way downstairs without falling over the dog, who is mostly black, or the cat (in the night all cats are black). The refrigerator light, when I reach in for cream, is a bit blinding at this hour, and when I open the laptop I realize that I have no idea how the keyboard lights up, but it does. By 6:30 AM I can see the changing colors of the trees outside, and grazing deer if there are any (there aren't).

The temperature has dipped into the thirties overnight, although a frost isn't expected for at least a couple of weeks, even here in southern Maine. I also have a prejudice against turning the heat on in the morning, for as long as I can stand it, so in the coming months the temptation to stay in bed in the dark will be greater. But now the sun is about to rise and it's time to stop.