BMNT*

Yeah, it was that hot.
I woke before sunrise, a habit I developed in the Army that I've never been able or really wanted to break.

I really love the quiet morning hours, that hushed time when the sky lightens before dawn. The birds rouse and in singles or pairs or small groups stripe their black tracers across the paling sky. The night sounds, the small tics and distant clashing, are lost in the growing rush of daynoise. The world begins again, shakes itself and looks around to see if anything has changed overnight.

This morning had the flat dusty feeling you get before one of the really hot ones here, the air hard and breathless, the heat still radiating from the ground. But the morning hours were cool enough to enjoy a cup of coffee and the newspaper outside in the quiet.

*(for those of you who don't know this useful acronym, it means "Before Morning Nautical Twilight", defined here as "the time when the center of the Sun is more than 6° below the horizon but less than 12°". BMNT is the twilit time before dawn when, in the ancient Bedouin tradition, you can distinguish a white thread from a black., i.e., you can see. How 'bout that?)