A Story of the Sky

Field Notes III.V: Sunrise photography and thoughts about the everlasting nature of the sky

Welcome to Field Notes!

It is still dark as I drive. Another early Sunday morning, waiting for that first cup of coffee to jump start my brain stem and lend me the fortitude to grind through the next 12 hours of shift.

The night sky is hazy. Stars are obscured. A fingernail moon hovers above the tree line as the road turns east. Interesting. It seems like just the other day I photographed the nearly full moon setting over City Hall. Time flies. That was more than two weeks ago now. I drive on to the hum of the road, in radio silence. Few other cars are out on these lonely streets.

The angle for that moonset over City Hall the other day doesn’t make sense. Town is behind me as I head away from it, but this sliver moon is there in front. Oh. It has been over two weeks. That sliver moon isn’t setting. It is just now rising.

The clouds start to blush and I get a feeling that this sky has a story to tell. The clock is ticking. Where can I go to photograph to the east, before the moon rises too high and the dawn arrives? There is a spot I can try, but the clock is ticking.

Horizons are a powerful thing to one living in a land dominated by trees, if you can find them. When you see them you become immediately aware that you have left the earthy, cradling womb of the forests. Horizons describe the expansiveness of the world around, but there is more. These open lands are surmounted by the vastness of the sky above.

The eternal, ever changing sky above overspreads the world from horizon to horizon. Each day the sky tells a unique story written in clouds and shifting light. It is a tale of pigments, intensity, and of all of the forms above and on the dark earth all around, both seen and unseen.

All of human history and everything yet to come unfolds beneath this story. Days of war and of celebration, of creativity and of devastation. They all happen under the same unending yet constantly changing sky that superimposes its own story over the events below. That clock is still ticking. You and I are part of the story as well.

I was a teenager when I held my father’s cold, still hand in my own. It was the afternoon of Christmas Eve and the room was quiet. His clock was slowly… ticking….. ticking…… to an end. Thoughts of all of the wasted time, and of how there was no more, filled my mind. I stayed with him as the darkness flooded his eyes and he took his last breath. Outside, the distant gray sky heavy with clouds told a story of scattered silent snow flurries falling across a land of dormant brown grass and leafless trees.

I was a young man dressed in formal wear on a hot clear day in early September. The sky over the treetops had a story to tell as I stood by the drifting Yellow River, but it was not one that I could hear. Time slowed, and I could not even hear the ticking of a clock. My knees trembled and my heart skipped beats as my bride walked closer down the aisle. The ever present sky remained unacknowledged that day. And the next day… and the next.

Sirens and flashing red strobes cut the night. I was a new medic working on an ambulance in Atlanta. The dispatch was for a gunshot to the leg. My partner and I barrelled down empty roads on the edge of the city at a time of the night when few ventured out.

The ambulance pulled to a stop at a run down gas station marked off by crime scene tape. The fire department had been dispatched to help, but where were they? A cop walks up, almost casually, to tell me that the guy has been shot a couple of times in the back. The clock was ticking.

He was alive, but barely. Confusion. Where was the fire department? They went to the guy shot in the leg a couple of blocks away. No one was coming to help. The clock was ticking.

Sirens cut the night as my partner careened the ambulance towards the hospital. We had to go. I would work the guy myself. He began to thrash on the stretcher as his moments leaked onto the floor in streaky pools of red. He needed oxygen, but he was tearing the mask away. He needed an IV, but I couldn’t contain his flailing arms. Someone still had to radio the hospital that we were coming. The clock was ticking.

Back home later that morning, I sat in my chair in the garden with my dog by my side. He died. The sun rose an hour ago. The sky was now blue and I read on it a tale of scattered soft white clouds. Did I make the right call? Should I have waited for the fire department? A breeze played gently in the boughs of the pines.

The sky has witnessed it all.

Back to the present.

I get some interesting photos of the hazy moon through a barbed wire fence. But then the interest turns to the clouds and the coming sunrise. This story looks like it will be a good one! But, this same spot won’t do. Fortunately, a short way down this little road is an open field with a horizon. There is no foreground interest here, but this is a story of the sky.

Pulled to the side of the road, I set my camera and tripod at a fence line. Then, I stand in the cold and clutch my insulated coffee mug as I watch the evolution of light. Cows moo gently in the darkness to my right. Periodically, I press the shutter release of my camera.

The sky speaks in tones of orange and vermilion. As the clouds drift by almost imperceptibly the light builds, then wanes, then builds again. Red dominates, and then fades into gold. Focused on the hues, I almost miss the soft call of an owl in the distance to my right. It calls a second time, and now we are friends. Minutes later, crows call more harshly in the dark to my left.

This is the story of today’s sky. It was never told this exact way before, and never will be again. Here I stand watching, cold but with an attentive awareness of the transience of time, honed sharp by life experience. I observe the story unfold above, of the same sky that has always been there and always will be.

The pre-dawn colors begin to fade and I can tell that the sun will soon crest the horizon. I am in the wrong spot to see it, though. Here it will come up behind the trees.

The clock is ticking, but I remain confident. I hop back in the car and drive a hundred yards or so down the road. There. I set my tripod and camera before the same field and the same scene, but a slightly different angle. The earth turns and the sun crests the rim of the world. I press the shutter button.

The story is perfect, as it always has been and always will be.

Post script- This was a good sunrise and I did my best to expound upon it in a way that encompasses every day and all of our days, and even all of humanity. What do you think? Have you ever had days with impactful events and considered the skies above and how they are the same skies that stretch over us every day? I’d love to hear about it!

I put a lot of work into Field Notes and make it available all for free in the hopes that we can learn and grow together. Here are a few ways that you can contribute to help me keep this thing going-

Or, purchase a full resolution digital download of one of my photos with a license for personal use for a print, computer/phone wallpaper, or whatever. Remember, paid subscribers receive select images for free and 50% off of the others.