I checked off another item on my bucket list last week when my wife and I went to Acadia National Park in Maine and witnessed one of the most stunning things I have ever seen.
Sunrise.
Oh, I’ve seen the sun come up many times, but never from this perspective, atop Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on Mount Desert Island (1,530 feet), and thus the highest on the east coast of the United States.
To ensure that we could get there in time, I reserved a spot through the National Park Service website for its earliest availability, 5:00am to 6:30am. Knowing the sun would become visible around 6:13am, we got up around quarter to five, got dressed, filled our water bottles, shoved a few other items into a bag, and were out of our hotel room in nearby Bar Harbor by 5am.
When we arrived at the summit twenty minutes later, we were nowhere close to the first to arrive. It looked like a hundred or so people were already on site, but there were still plenty of parking spaces and lichen-covered rocks to sit on overlooking the Atlantic, with several large islands in our sight lines, as well.
You know all those times your parents told you not to look directly at the sun? In this instance, I couldn’t look anywhere else.
In the distance, we viewed dawn’s early light, the pre-sunrise. As we watched the hazy glow in the distance, the sun slowly peeked out over the horizon in a vibrant red. I checked the time and smiled, noting that nature was perfectly punctual. Over the next few minutes, the sun gently rose into an orb, its reflection bouncing off the water before turning bright yellow.
I am rarely awed into silence, but this was one of those moments. Like watching Niagara Falls. Like standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Like scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef.
Simply magnificent!