Heading out toward cold dark mountain rock, cautious booted feet crunch their way from my car, over the wooden footbridge, and up the tree-lined path to Bald Rock Mountain. The light from my cell phone is too weak to do much good, so I turn it off to save the battery. It’s dark on the mountain but not pitch dark. The hard rock surface feels solid under my boots. My goal is only a few hundred feet way, near the center of the clearing. I want the best view I can have as the sun comes over the horizon. I’m armed with hot coffee in my thermos, camera strap over my shoulder.
Up the slanted rock face, straining to see a spot to put my next step, I slowly make my way. At the highest point I stop and stand there looking out, taking in the essence of that morning, taking in the freshest air my lungs have ever breathed. My mind is filled with anticipation for whatever might display across the skies in just a few moments.
I have seen the sun rise over the horizon to clear skies, with a white light or a yellow light flooding the valleys and rolling hills. I have seen the skies turn pink. I’ve seen the sky is so filled with clouds that the sun could barely affect the view. But I had not before seen what I was going to see today.
Crisp air softly nudges fog along a ridge of purple hills, hills I can barely see, not much more than outlines in the distance, with the faintest light beyond.
I find a place to sit, a flat-topped rock the size of a large dining room table.
I lay down my camera gear and open my thermos. I put the rim of my thermos to my cup and begin to pour. Steam escapes from the hot coffee and rises past my nose, filling it with the sweet smell of anticipation. My full attention is now on my waiting coffee cup. Closing my eyes, I meditate on the blessings of that first sip, breathing deeply. Moments go by. I opened my eyes to bring the rim of the cup to my lips. The coffee takes on an orange hue, as does the ground around me.
I look up.
It’s as though the sky has been set on fire. In the moments that follow, a mesmerizing display of colors fills the sky. I almost forgot about my camera. With the scent of fresh coffee in my nose, and the taste of it on my tongue, with cold hands wrapped around the warm cup, with the still quiet of the morning in my ears, and a colorful sky filling my eyes … my senses were loaded to capacity.
Coffee tastes quite extraordinary when the sky is on fire. Every sip was savored, until the cup was empty, and steam rose from it no more.
I put the cup down and grabbed my camera. What I saw at that moment is what you see in today’s photograph. Whether the colors in the sky were as bold as the ones in the photograph is difficult for me to say. But what I can say and must say is that those colors certainly express how I felt sitting there on a rock at the top of Bald Rock Mountain, on a cold winter’s morning when my coffee tasted like heaven, and the sky was on fire.