First Light

Mahktesh Ramon, Negev, Israel

My alarm goes off. Why am I awake right now? The sun's not even up.

Oh, that's right. The sun's not up.

Fun fact: the sun has risen 7,665 times (plus a few) in my twenty one years of life (yes I googled it)--yet I've never physically seen the sun rise with my own eyes.

I've seen my share of sunsets though. The big ball of orange quietly dips beneath the distant rise of the mountains or the sparkling expanse of the ocean or the steel towers of the city, falling so slowly you can sometimes see the dark line of earth consume the light little by little. Even in death, the sun paints the sky with a beautiful farewell to its patron Earth, a goodbye we might take more seriously if we weren't aware of the return that inevitably takes place a little less than twelve hours later.

I've seen the sun die many times, laid to rest with a beautiful eulogy stained in the sky above. But I've never seen its birth. Sunset isn't the same as sunrise. There's no commitment in a sunset.

It's five-something AM Israeli time. I should've worn actual pants--it's gotta be 40 degrees in this desert right now. But, tired and cold, I will myself to stay, weary eyes expectantly fixed on the horizon as I shiver with the few brave souls who have made this commitment with me.

A few minutes later, there it is--the first speckle of light climbing over the dirty mountains in the distance, like the first cry of life from the womb. Cameras and Iphones appear out of thin air to capture the moment, beeping and chirping as little machines try to do justice to an already perfect picture. After a couple attempts, I put my camera away.

And just like that, it's done. The Lion King-looking ball of light has freed itself from it's mother horizon and begins the day-trip across the sky that it has completed every single day since the beginning. I sacrificed three hours of sleep to witness five minutes of sun that I'd never seen before--five minutes of sun that happens every single day. 

I've been to a couple funerals; I've known people who have died. I think we all have--and if we haven't, we will. But I have never cried the way I cried when I laid eyes on my little sister for the first time. There's something about the way a bud opens into a flower, the way the soft shell of a robin's egg is slowly cracked and broken by the little bird inside, the way the sun appears over the earth for the first time that day. Out of darkness, light; out of nothing, something.

I didn't shed any tears while watching the sun ascend over the desert horizon that morning--and I've only seen one other sunrise since (it was also in Israel... because morning commitments are tough). But, as cliche as it sounds, I will never forget the first time I saw the birth of a day.

As I walked back to the hostel with the newborn sun warming my back, someone pulled up their Instagram. At the top of the feed were sunset pictures of the same sun from friends back home--from the other side of the world.

Sunrise, sunset.