In the dead of winter, if you time it just right, the car will be parked, the coat zipped up, and the camera strap hung across your shoulder. You can walk over that little footbridge, up that short path, and out onto a mountain made of rock.
Before your eyes can adjust to what is unfolding, you can see some leafless trees, silhouetted in a new dawn. Though the limbs are bare now, the trees are just sleeping, waiting for the first warm day of spring to burst again into life.
Out beyond those trees, the rising sun makes its way toward the horizon, bringing with it the hope and promise of a new day. And if you can appreciate what all that means, you will halt your journey. You will stand there in amazement. You will stand there in reverence to the glory of nature's ever-changing face and what it means to the very life you are living.
For your life may sometimes seem cold and harsh, sometimes barren, sometimes hard. But that's just part of the human experience. Somewhere out there in the future, perhaps today or tomorrow, is a brighter and better time coming to you. If you look close enough, you may see hints of its approach. But even if you cannot see it, it's out there. It's on its way.
You may have to do your part to take advantage of it. We all have our mountaintops. And some of them are hard to climb. But if we want to see what we can see from way up there, the climb will be worth it.
There is something so beautiful and magnificent about dawn from a mountaintop. I have climbed a few mountains in my time, figuratively of course. I am not a mountain climber. Vietnam was my toughest figurative mountain; and I did once spend three nights on a mountainside there, as my company made its way down the mountain in search of evidence of the Vietcong that had been harassing our mountaintop outpost.
This particular mountaintop only required that I wake up before 5 AM, shower, throw on some clothes, grab a bite to eat, grab my camera gear, jump in my car, drive through the dark for an hour or so, and then around some curvy mountain roads. And though I did not have to break a sweat to get there, as I stood in the spot where I took this photograph on that cold winter morning, I felt as though I had done something, something worthwhile, if only for myself.
And now I have a record of it, a record I can review anytime I want. I can look at this photograph and without too much effort I can feel like I'm there again, on that mountaintop, looking out past those sleeping trees, watching the first light of dawn is it brightens the day, as it brightens my life and lets me believe in a better future.