The small hours of the morning are not for the many. Those of us who cannot party late, nor linger awake in our beds, who cannot plunge deep enough into rest to make an entire night of it, we are the ones who appreciate the small hours.

We are misfits, pariahs, insomniacs. Some of us are wakeful by habit, others cruelly tormented by physical or mental ailments. Missing so much that is good about late evenings, particularly the social life, we find our compensation where we can. One of the great blessings of the earliest hours, at least on some wintry days, is the moonlight.

It is always a reverential experience to stand in a grove of mature pines, but the awe of their presence is greatly enhanced by moonlight. If there is no wind, the silence is breathtaking. On packed snowdrifts at the feet of the trees, the outline of their boughs is traced with perfect fidelity, in sharpest resolution. You can almost see the shadows move, as the moon follows its faithful arc across the heavens. In their shadowy manifestations, the trees extend their limbs to each other, and touch.

As the minutes pass, the moon morphs these shadows into different touches, different shapes, different possibilities. At long last, if you have been still enough to observe all this without movement or sound, you will be rewarded with the soft hooting of an owl, surprisingly close, but far above in the thickest cover of the foliage. A fit keeper of this quiet shadow-world, the owl is judicious and sparing in its utterances. The hooting is spaced discreetly, just often enough to keep you hanging on every syllable, unwilling to move and shatter the spell.

But quiet, shadow, and mood are not all there is to this early morning. There is also a chill to the air, that reaches deep down the neck of your jacket, and messes with your bones.

You cannot stay, but you can remember the feel of this earliest, quietest time of the day.

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Forest Lake Times
P.O. Box 218
880 SW 15 St.
Forest Lake, MN 55025
651-464-4601
Fax 651-464-4605