I KEEP TELLING myself to stop taking pictures of sunrises. My website is overrun with them. Surely, I can come up with something new.
And then the sky does this:
Am I supposed to ignore it? Pretend it isn’t breathtaking and deserving of an audience beyond my camera’s lens? Can I resist the poetic beauty of Mother Nature this morning?
Nope. Not a chance.
I’ve learned, since taking the photograph at 7 AM, that this is called a mackerel sky — cirrocumulus clouds dappling the blue in an undulating pattern, like fish scales. It’s a harbinger of weather change, and the weather is definitely changing. Snow’s in the forecast again, and schools have already closed for tomorrow. My weather app promises snow at 1 AM, and the sky going into work looks like this:
A full moon shines down, its edges blurred by haze. I’m hopeful. And wary.
Tuesday’s predicted 1 AM snow turned into ice at 3 AM. Not pretty, just slick. Not full-scale winter, just semi-winter. But tonight feels different. The ED is hopping — a full moon and weather tend to do that. The floors are quiet — for now.
I’m thinking back on that mackerel sky, on sunrays reflecting oranges and pinks down to the sleepy valley below. I’m reflecting on how lucky I am to be awake at that hour, heading home for sleep, but never missing the most beautiful part of the day.
Sometimes, I wonder if I take so many sunrise photos because I need the proof. Proof there’s beauty at the edge of exhaustion, that the world keeps spinning no matter how heavy the night has been.
Other times, I think it’s just a compulsion, a way of bearing witness, a reminder not every day has to be different to be miraculous.
When I’m driving home after a long shift, the sky just beginning to blush, it feels like a small benediction. A reason to be glad I was awake for the dark, so I could see the light return.
In the hospital, we recognize patterns — full moons bring chaos, storm fronts charge everything. But the truth is, nothing’s predictable. Not the weather, not the work, not what the sky will do at 7 AM or 9 PM. Maybe that’s why I keep looking up. Because the world keeps surprising me. Because beauty, like hope, refuses to follow a schedule.
Maybe that’s what I’m chasing in every sunrise and moonrise: the reminder that chaos and calm live side by side, that even when the world feels uncertain, the sky keeps painting something new.
Sometimes it’s a mackerel sky. Sometimes, it’s a full moon caught in clouds.
Every time, it’s a gift.
So I take back my original thought —
Go ahead, Mother Nature. Keep showing off. Give me your very best.
I’ll keep snapping photos, making room on my website for a thousand dawns, chasing whatever light you give me. I’ll keep hoping, if not for snow, then at least for a reason to look up.
Because it’s always more than just another sunrise. Just another full moon. Just another night shift in December. There’s beauty and surprise in every moment. So I’ll be out there, looking for the light every time.
Leave a Reply