An Early Morning Tour
I’m convinced early mornings are the closest we’ll ever come to time traveling. Moving consciously through the world while it’s asleep is experiencing a sliver of time that most people are missing. I love the way time slowly and smoothly slips around me in the pre-dawn hours of the morning; I always have.
I prefer to go to bed in the same day I woke up in and I’m the most productive and clear-headed version of myself the early morning. Connor, on the other hand, is an emerging morning person; call him morning-curious. Historically, he’s had a very difficult time waking up in the morning. He’s been known to set several alarms and fall asleep standing up in the shower. When we led backpacking trips together shortly after we met, I used to guilt him into getting up in the morning by starting to do all the chores by myself.
But over the last few years, Connor’s level of functioning in the mornings has improved. He wakes up earlier and more easily, and it rarely requires the employment of guilt. He is especially motivated by the possibility of early morning adventures. He’ll get up early to go for a bike ride or a ski tour with no problem.
This was the case on Thursday when we left the house at 5am to drive down to Hunter Mountain to ski with our friend Gavin. We slipped through the hour and a half drive down to Hunter, coffee in hand and snow on our minds. The air was dry and cold when we started; a bitter, unrelenting wind teased us as we buckled boots and zipped jackets.
As soon as we started moving uphill, the chill was chased away by pumping hearts and sweat was not long to follow. Hunter was closed for the day, making uphill travel the only way to access our first crispy corduroy of the season. It’s awesome having friends like Gavin who are well connected and down for spontaneous early morning adventures.
We watched the light grow all around us as we climbed higher into the fog toward the summit. When we got there, we took shelter in the summit lodge to add layers and shift equipment for the ski down. What took over an hour to ski up took about eight minutes to ski down, but it was a glorious eight minutes. Hard earned through sweat and driving and a very early morning.
When we got down, we went our separate ways—on to jobs and work life. I looked at the clock when we got back in the car and it was only 9. Lots of people were waking up just then.
They must not know how to time travel.
