The others gathered and we started up the trail. It was not long, only about half a mile, but the adrenaling from my early rise was rushing through all my sensors, and we fairly sprinted up the rocky mountainshide. I could hear everyone laughing and smiling behind me, knowing that they felt the same. We had all wanted to spend the night at the top, but Tom wouldn't allow it, so we had to make up for that lost time while climbing.
When I finally reached the top I was out of breath, but it felt good, taking deep, freeing breaths of the early morning mountain air. Somehow air always seems crisper, more real, in the morning, as though it suspects that no one is up to notice and so reveals it's true nature. I looked around me, but it was as though a wall of clouds enclosed our small group and the mountain top off from the world. We seemed to be the only thing on the planet, the mountain being the only other feature of our world. Then I saw them. In the center of our world was a small wall of rocks, just enough to block the wind, and inside there were people, asleep. We were quiet, and let them sleep, although I don't think we would have spoken even if they hadn't been present. This was a time when the very mist that enclosed us seemed to forbid speech, the feeling was simply not open to any form of discussion. The wind whistled by, leaving me chilled on the surface, and yet still warm inside. It was a wait, but the time and place seemed right for contemplation of a sort, perhaps even contemplation of the very things around me, or myself. Then It came.
It was not a particularly spectacular sunrise. It lacked the colors nad brightness that I expected to see, yet in it's own was it was the most beautiful sunrise that ever was. Partly because of it's simplicity, a round, red orb rising through the clouds as if from nowhere, and partly because I was there, shivering in my jacket, but there completely in mind and soul, in a way that is so rare that it is beautiful all in itself.
I don't know how long it took, or when we decided to leave, but somehow it has always seemed that I left part of myself at the summit of that mountain. Some part that I can reach out to when I need to feel that solitude, and safety, and beauty. I think everyone has their point of ultiimate reflection, and that sunrise was mine.
-1991