Dawn's Early Light

A couple of years ago Lee and I went on a cruise to Alaska.  We decided to economize by taking an interior cabin; after all, we reasoned, we would only be there to sleep, so we didn't care about the lack of a view.

However, the door to the hallway was so tightly fitted that no chink of light could make its way into the cabin.  Once we turned off the interior lights we were plunged into utter darkness, which was unexpectedly disorienting.  Not only did it make dead-of-the-night trips to the bathroom adventures in barked shins and stubbed toes, we had no cues for waking in the morning.  The cabin was at the end of the ship, under the outdoor pool (not being used in Alaska in September), so it was also extremely quiet.  When we did wake up, we had to turn on the lights to determine whether it was 2 am or 2 pm.  We became dependent on wake-up calls to avoid missing our shore excursions.

This was the first time I realized how moving to Arizona has changed my sleeping patterns.  Always before I lived far enough north and had a long enough commute that I absolutely, positively had to use an alarm clock in order to wake up on work days.  In the winter in Minnesota, in fact, I drove to work in the dark, worked all day in a windowless cubicle, and drove back home in the dark; had the office not had windows in the lunchroom, I could have gone for days without ever seeing the sun.  My circadian rhythm in those days was totally confused.  I dreaded the minute the alarm would blare in my ear, catapulting me out of bed with my heart pounding.

Now, though, I live in a sunny climate where the sky lightens around 7 am in the winter and at this time of the year is pretty bright by 5 am, and my body responds with enthusiasm to the dawn.  I know most of the "how to get a good night's sleep" advice promulgated by experts says to use blackout window coverings and to go to bed and get up at the same time every single day, but Mother Nature has a better idea.  Because I now have a short commute, I can wake with the sun regardless of the time of year, and be ready to go to bed 8 1/2 hours before.  My body is perfectly happy taking its cues from the light.  Waking up is painless, and I only need to worry about an alarm when I'm catching an early morning flight to, say, Alaska.

If I ever have to move back to a part of the country where daylight is in short supply during the winter, I'm going to buy a sunrise alarm clock to fake it.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_ruskin_109487?src=t_dawn

 "Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close." ~John Ruskin

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_ruskin_109487?src=t_dawn

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_ruskin_109487?src=t_dawn