Mornings and Mundane Kinds of Magic

by Jen Jackson

Blog Last Updated; 6/7/2010

Summer's here. Today, the mercury is supposed to top 100. Tomorrow, record highs. Perhaps 106 degrees. After an interminably long winter ? one of frozen pipes, snow on the ground for two months straight, inversions, a wood stove going nonstop ? it hardly seems possible that we're already in the thick of things in this more traditionally unbearable desert season. Yet, here we are.

I'm sitting on the bench in front of our place, watching the sun rise over the La Sals. I'm already warm in my shorts and t-shirt. The sun has not yet crested the horizon line. There is something uniquely evocative about summer mornings for me in recent years. Perhaps this is because I've finally developed an intimacy with them, a relationship that allows me to enjoy the outdoors even in the most difficult months of the year here. Countless mornings such as this have found me already 20 miles into my bike ride when the tip of Mount Tukuhnikivats catches the first light of dawn. Countless mornings have found me savoring the birdsong of pre-light, the dense coolness of the night-settled air, the musky soft vegetal smell that all too quickly evaporates when light finally hits the canyon walls, the stillness of morning that is so fleeting.

Summer mornings here are a time of freedom ? freedom to wander before the day becomes oppressive; freedom to be silent and simply enjoy the wonder of breathing mysterious night smells; freedom to feel that the day is still solely mine and no one else's; freedom to revel in the magic of liminal space, of transitions, of a place between dark and light.

And the most amazing thing? Mornings like this happen every day. It makes me wonder at the other forms of mundane magic we so often miss because we have not yet developed an intimacy with them ? the movement of celestial bodies across the night sky, the interplay of shadow and light across vast expanses, sunsets always vivid and new. And so, I ask myself, do we find more magic in newness and surprise or in intimacy and familiarity? Of course, there is the shock value of the unexpected, the out-of-the-ordinary. But I don't believe that is magic so much as newness. Instead, I think I'm coming to learn that falling in love with what has been there all along ? developing a consciousness of its quiet, unconditional tug on your heart and senses ? is the deepest kind of magic. Whether it be mornings and sunrise or a change of season, the meadowlark's song, the pungent spring smell of Russian olive, the way your lover looks in slumber every single morning, or a deeper sense of that constant familial love?these everyday occurrences hold the most profound magic and sway over our hearts.

Mornings just like this arise every summer day. And, yet, I cherish them. My mother and father have borne the weight of wanting for my well-being every day for 30 years. And that fact only becomes more moving and astounding as time goes by. I wake up to redrock each day and never tire of the view. Though I have spent a life of seeking new adventures ? new kinds of magic ? I am slowly learning that the most profound elements of life are those that I already hold closest to my heart.

In intimacy, familiarity and love ? with a landscape, with the predawn hour, with the sweet being still slumbering nearby ? we find the things powerful enough to glacially change a life.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010
at 11:00:50 AM

Suggest removal

Lynn-Marie says:

Jen, your exquisite ode to a desert morning and the mundane magic of the everyday transmitted the “birdsong of pre-light, the dense coolness of the night-settled air, the musky soft vegetal smell” to the quiet dawn of my home miles from Spanish Valley. Thank you.