Did you know the world is actually louder the hour before sunrise than it is at dawn?
I walk out early in the still darkness. Only that stillness is an illusion; that silence is an illusion. There is a steady drum of insect sounds, steady, silent only if you aren't listening, almost a roar if you pay attention. I do not hear my footsteps on the pavement, only the hum of the night-time world. I do not hear the plane passing overhead.
Dawn is different, a liminal space. It is not silent exactly but yet the quality of the sound is different. The chirping of insects fades. The soft singing of the birds begins so quietly that you could almost miss it, wondering where in the gradual crescendo you first registered its presence. You hear the subtle rustling of the leaves. It seems you can almost hear the grass.
At dawn my footsteps on the pavement seem thunderous, as if I am an intruder in a brief time-capsule of space. It doesn't last. Now, if a plane flies overhead, I hear its roar. The sounds of civilization slowly arise and the sound of the earth itself, the sound of its other inhabitants, the ones we tend to ignore in our own self-interested activities fade into the background.
I hear traffic on the main road below. A garage door opens. Laughter. A car engine. Work, school, the human world beckons. It has begun.
