Get your ass out of bed.

I get up early, y’all.

This may surprise you, given the regularity with which I talk about alcohol and all-night benders and crushing hangovers and such, but it’s true: I’m an early riser.

(And if you’re thinking that an early alarm puts a little crimp in the drinking schedule…you’re right. But don’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t want to tarnish my drunken reputation.)

Anyhow, for those of you writerly-types who don’t make a habit of getting up with or before the sun, I’m here to tell you you’re missing out a little. Not only does it allow you to get things done before the majority of the world has woken up, it also opens you up to a whole range of sensory experiences most folk just don’t get.

I run, see. And I ride my bike a lot. And if I want to do those things and still get to work before 7:30, I kind of have to get up early, don’t I? Yup.

Ergo, a list of things you can discover if you rise before the dawn. You’re welcome. (You can thank me later. After you’ve had a few cups of coffee, that is.)

1. The light is different at dawn.

In terms of the physics, there’s not much difference between the light at sunset and the light at dawn. When it comes to feel, though? They’re worlds apart. Thomas Hardy made mention of it in his Tess of the D’Urbervilles, back in 1891:

“The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day’s close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of the evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse.”

Don’t believe me? Try it. Get up before dawn and watch the light infiltrate the dark east. You’ll understand.

2. Your local 6-lane highway is deserted sometimes.

Y’know all those apocalyptic movies and shows where people wander down a deserted superhighway? Like this*:

Well, if you get up early enough, you, too, can see the nearest 6+ lane highway sans vehicles. I got up at 4am to run a few weeks ago (I had to be at a work appointment VERY early that day), and there were precisely zero cars on the roads. Even the very big roads. It’s something to see, I can assure you.

3. Your tracking skillz will improve.

One time, back in summer when it was actually light when I got up, I tried a different route on my morning run. I had doubled back, and was retracing my steps toward home, when I noticed something in the dew-wet grass. As it turned out, when I had run through the grass earlier, my feet had shaken loose the dew that had been clinging to the vegetation, so while the still-dewy grass was silvery in the morning light, my footsteps were visible as matte, green scars in the glimmering meadow.

And, having read a thousand and one fantasy novels in which tracking skills are used, my mind naturally jumped to the implications of my discovery: you can’t hide your tracks in grass at dawn.

4. New scents and sounds.

If you get up early enough in the summertime, the birds aren’t awake yet. The only sound you’ll hear is the crickets, scraping out their rhythmic call en masse, and the scrape of your own footsteps. (The rabbits rise before dawn, however. And that crane by the pond down the street is awake, but not talking.)

Wait a while, though, and the birds will begin to call as the cricketsong fades.

Too, in the still air of the morning, scents linger. The stain of diesel exhaust, the tang of algae down by the water, the odor of must and unwashed human from that house up the street that doesn’t get cleaned enough, the rot of garbage in the humid summer—all smells you might not catch in the busyness of the day.

5. A different community.

In my neighborhood, around 5:30 in the morning, three women wearing ballcaps and sweaters walk the track around the pond almost every morning. A slight, aging, Asian woman walks it too, but in the opposite direction. The lanky woman with the chocolate lab jogs through the park on the way to my street.

I greet them as I run, because it’s what you do at that time in the morning. You don’t ignore them; they’ve made the effort to be up early as well, so the least you could do is say hello.

Everyone I see before 6am has a certain amount of discipline. Our good mornings are both greeting, and tacit acknowledgement of that fact. It’s a self-focused, taciturn community, but it’s a community nonetheless, and a different one from that of the Starbucks at 8:30 am.

*

None of this, I realize, is necessarily inducement for you to drag your tired bones out of bed first thing in the morning, writer-friends. But if elucubration is your thing, you might want to try, just once, turning your schedule the opposite direction. Pretend you’re taking a friend to the airport or something. Y’know.

Set the alarm. Prepare the coffee maker. Resist the urge to hit the snooze button. Then get up. Go.

It’s a whole new world out here, folks, made fresh every day for those with eyes to see it.

Why not join me?

*Image ganked shamelessly from season 1 of The Walking Dead. Which is awesomesauce. I stayed up all night to watch the entire season last week. (I didn’t get up early the following morning. Sometimes it’s just that way.)