Yellowstone River Hayden Valley       click to enlarge

By nature I was never a morning person. Getting up at the crack of dawn, looking forward to the coming day, being cheerful and enthusiastic about whatever the day might bring, that never was my strong point. I was more of the “Is my coffee ready yet? What catastrophe is waiting for me today. Who do I have to kill this morning.” kind of guy. Then I got older.

One of the unexplainable things about aging is that every habit you’ve had in your life changes. If you were Type A, now you’re mellow or at least mellower. If you were someone who regularly pounded out 8-10 hours of sleep and couldn’t wait for the weekend so you could sleep til noon, now you’re getting up at 4:30 in the morning and you can’t get back to sleep. I mean you can’t get back to sleep. The sleeping thing in your brain says “no, dude, you’re up, deal with it.” This is one of the most difficult changes to come to grips with.

My dad, who was one for saying sayings, used to say “If you find yourself in hot water, take a bath.” He also said “A bird in the hand makes it really difficult to blow your nose.” So I learned pretty early on which sayings were useful and which weren’t. The ‘take a bath’ one comes in handy for getting through adverse situations, but because it is often a hard thing to do, not many people do it. The ‘bird in the hand’ one, well, that was just dad.

Going to Yellowstone to photograph the park in all its glory was the thing that turned waking up really early into a 14 carat advantage. I was up, the park was too. It was beautiful, what was I doing sitting here drinking coffee when I could be out there doing what I came for. I began to understand what the poor misguided but enthusiastic, idiots had been talking about when they blathered on in their bubbly manner about the beauty of the sunrise and how good it felt to be out and about in the crisp morning air. I almost forgave myself for the black murderous thoughts I had about slowly strangling them in the crisp morning air of their beautiful sunrise, but not quite. Some of them actually would have deserved it.

The biggest shock though was that I had suddenly become one of them. Not the enthusiastic bubbly airhead kind but just the realization that it was beautiful and there was a whole new world to be seen before 10:00 am. and it was ok to be up for it. I was careful to not spread the cheer to those still stuck in the “If god meant for you to wake up early, it would happen automatically” stage of their life, they have enough going on without some jerk adding to their misery. Things would work out for them or they wouldn’t. I recognized the point they were at but I knew I had changed. The gods are nothing if not capricious. It must have amused them no end to have me standing out there in the pre-dawn cold freezing my hiney off waiting for the light to turn so I could get the shot. The worst part of it though was making me enjoy it.

The image above is the sun rising over the Yellowstone river in the Hayden valley on a very cold morning. I was there waiting for it. In fact I had been there early because I was up anyway. And it was worth every freezing second.