The Hour Before
On the longest hour of the day.
In November my house gives me four full hours of direct sun on a clear day. By December it is closer to three. I have been keeping a record since 2009, the second winter I lived here, when I realized that the position of the small triangle of light on the kitchen floor was going to be the only clock I needed.
What this means is that the hour before the sun comes up matters. It is the longest hour of the day. It is the hour when the cabin is the most itself.
I am up at five-twenty most mornings, regardless of season. I do not set an alarm. I have not needed an alarm in this house since the first winter, when I learned that the cold itself is an alarm if you sleep with the bedroom window open even a crack. The kitchen is the warmest room. I go there first. The kettle takes about nine minutes. In nine minutes I stand at the window with my hands warming on whatever surface is warmest - the side of the stove, the kettle's belly when it is halfway hot, the dog's head when she is awake first - and I look at the dark.
The dark in November on the eastern shore of the island has a particular quality. It is not pure dark. The clouds catch some glow off the strait. The fir trees against the sky are darker than the sky itself, but not by much. The water, when I can see it, is a kind of black-with-mercury-in-it. I have watched this exact view forty times this fall.
What I am doing in that hour, mostly, is nothing. I am letting the day arrive. I am not planning the day. I am not reading. I am not on a phone. I am drinking a coffee that I made by hand, slowly, in a small pot. I have come to think of this as the hour I am paying for the rest of the day.
The sun comes up at around seven-thirty in November. By the time it does, I have already had the morning. The morning is the hour before. The day that comes after the sunrise is something else, a busier thing. But the morning - the hour I came here for, the hour the cabin gives me free of charge if I am willing to be up to receive it - that has happened, and it is mine.