Dawn stretches her arms early and trickles her beams across canopies of Loblolly and Longleaf pines. These evergreen giants bask in the warmth dawn offers hours before the rest of the forest can. Fog rolls off the lake like ghosts running from intruders to their haunts, and calls from the chickadee can be heard deeper into the woods. No fish or bugs break the surface of the lake. Lilly pads still hold their green even though temperatures at night are in the 30's.
I take in this unusual scene. It's early, maybe five or six, I didn't check my phone when I left the tent and put on my Carhartt pants for an extra layer of warmth. My eyes are puffy from campfire smoke and I cram my hands into my coat pockets. For a moment I am apart of this awakening. The peace a new day brings drapes itself over the dew and hangs from the high up tree branches. I see it float across the water and slip across the sky.
For a moment, I go with it. Racing over fallen trees rotted out from termites and years of laying on the first floor, over thorny vines and baby oaks, and up to the top of the Loblolly, almost 90 feet high, to rest and steep in the sunlight. I am snapped back to myself when a little voice chirps behind me asking where I am at. I walk back to the tent and wrap this tiny human in my arms, and I feel my body swell with the morning peace.