Sunday Post – Dawn

Dawn is such a photogenic time!  And one which I didn’t used to see very often, certainly of my own volition.  That is, until the rhythm of life changed with my move  to the tropics, where its the most beautiful time – cool, bright,  and filled with the comforting sounds of the world slowly embracing the day.

I have a “Dawn Series” I thought you might enjoy – all shot here in Sri Lanka, in my favourite part of the island:  the Knuckles ranges.

My friend Mo and I kept seeing these Knuckles mountains, in the distance, on our jaunts around various places in the central part of the island.   After hunting around on the internet, we eventually came across a place to stay, and set off one weekend to get a close-up of these characteristically shaped mountains.  We were a little late arriving – we’d been waylaid, watching an elephant loading logs onto a truck.

The wind – a howling, tenacious, tearing wind – was really all we registered when we arrived, in the dark – the wind and the rather grim and charmless features of our accommodation.  When I awoke, there was a quality to the light that almost hushed the gale outside.   I opened the door to investigate, and this is what I saw:

Awestruck, at first, then propelled like an automaton, I dashed inside and scrabbled in the gloom looking for my camera, all the while importuning Mo to motivate herself out from beneath her snuggling doona, to “come and see”.

Barking Deer Lodge is transformed by the dawn.

We loitered there, on that narrow ledge above the yawning valleys below, mesmerised by nature’s own sound and light show, as finally, the sun thrust its mighty burnished head above the mountains down below.

Well on its way to becoming a ‘favourite place on earth’ long before breakfast, or stepping off that narrow ledge to explore the mountains themselves,  now when the craggy Knuckles call, we set forth with joy and anticipation to Barking Deer Lodge, if only to watch the sun rise in the morning.  Sometimes it’s all grey and misty, shot with pinks and mauves

Sometimes, it’s copper and brown with the dust of summers on the plains.

And sometimes, perched on the edge of the world, it seems we’re sandwiched between the heavy water-laden clouds and the inky black mountains.

There was only one morning the sun failed to make an appearance.  Buried beneath the clouds of a massive storm system, it failed to arrive all day, the rain whited out the valley, obscured the lakes, but up through the pass, waterfalls were sending ribbons of silver crashing down the jagged rocky peaks – but that’s another story.

Thanks to Jake of Jakesprinters for this Sunday’s prompt.  Visit some of the other entries, here.