"Daybreak on the reservation," Arizona/Utah, March 2010

Daybreak on the reservation

I'm not sure I've experienced a place any more peaceful and spectacular as Monument Valley at daybreak.

Day 230 of 365

Summer sunrise with the Moon and Venus

Coming home at 5:30 a.m., I got to gaze up at the pairing of the Moon and Venus in the lightening dawn sky, but didn't get to an open (and dark) enough space to spot the International Space Station as it moved across the sky.

"NYC, 5:30 in the a.m.," June 2008

NYC 5:30 in the a.m.

There's something special about walking out of the office and standing on the streets of New York "finishing" your day while the majority of the city's residents are just about to start theirs.

New York City sunrise, Edgewater, NJ, November 2004

Week two of my conscientious effort to participate more regularly in the Photo Friday projects. I tend to think of the spectacles of nature as divine intervention of a sort. In college at Notre Dame, my roommate Bryan and I chose to skip the all-campus welcome-back mass our junior year to rent a canoe and paddle a few miles on the St. Joseph River. You'd be surprised at how pastoral the Michiana area can be if all you know of it is Grape Road, downtown South Bend and the campus (though the latter certainly is more scenic and peaceful than, say, campuses I've visited in Boston and Austin). The majesty of a sunrise or sunset, to me, is more of a display of the divine nature of this world than a factory-made reproduction of Christ on the cross or Mary and the baby in a nativity scene.

Besides, my archives contain few -- if any -- images of those last two icons. So sunrise it is.