Before dawn, they're headed to work

It's dark now at 5:45 a.m. as my wife and I begin our daily, 30-minute walk. At the neighborhood meeting last night, a number of residents expressed concern about the inadequacy of street lights and dark shadows along some stretches of the neighborhood streets. Although there are some areas that are darker than others, I haven't found the darkness to be that much of a problem. Nor have we been bothered by the speeding or reckless drivers some residents complained about last night. At 5:45 to 6:15, we have the streets pretty much to ourselves.

There are a few walkers and runners along the dim streets, and a handful of cars, too. We wear light-colored clothing and walk on the left so we'll be visible in the headlights of oncoming cars. Thus far, I've forgone the reflective vest that hangs beside the dog's leash and the flashing red clip-on light my son gave me years ago when I sometimes jogged in the dark. On the Ides of September, the sky is dark and the stars are bright, and the streets are mostly vacant.

What has surprised me the most in the several months we've been taking this morning walk is the number of people who are up and leaving for work before 6 a.m. For years, I awoke at 5:30 and left for the office before 7 a.m., and I thought I was the Early Bird. Relatively few people were on the roads at that hour, and most houses I passed had cars still parked in the driveway. But on my morning walks now, I see a fair number of people leaving home before 6, starting their day long before the sun rises. The eastern horizon is just beginning to show a rosy glow at that hour, and stars are still clearly visible. Most houses are dark. I'm guessing that most of these early risers are commuters, headed to Raleigh or Greenville or some more distant workplace, but a few are just getting an early start on the work day, beating the staff to the office and getting ahead of the game.

These are the Morning People, the types who are too eager to stay in bed or are too energized by the prospects of the day to let their mind rest until dawn. When I applied for a job as editor of a morning paper (with a workday that began in the afternoon and ended after midnight) more than 30 years ago, I was asked if I was a night person or a morning person. I responded that I thought a person trained himself to be the type he needed to be in the circumstances, and that's largely true. But I found I really missed the morning when I came home from work at 2 a.m. and slept until 10 or 11. The early morning is such a quietly refreshing and invigorating time, an ideal time to walk the dog and watch your neighbors head off to work earlier than you'd ever imagined.