My Sunrise

When I lived in the City, I made several trips down Halsted street on my bike, in a cab, in my car or even once or twice on a bus to get from the North Side to the Loop.  Just south of the Milwaukee, Grand and Halsted intersection is a bridge, I can't even remember over what.  Possibly train tracks.  Possibly an abandoned warehouse or small industrial complex or two.  There are old buildings everwhere, not big enough or impressive enough to be seen in the beautiful City skyline but big enough to block any view of it from the base of that bridge.

As I approached that point on Halsted, I'd smile with the simple anticipation of what I knew was waiting for me and that I knew would emerge only a few seconds later.  It is my favorite view of the City's -- my City's -- skyline, and likely one of the lesser known, lesser appreciated views.

Maybe "view" isn't the correct term for it, though.  If I were to snap a picture of it, I doubt that it would capture the beauty, strength and hugeness, of the scene, a close-up view of the Loop and its massive buildings.  No building is viewable in its entirety... no streets can been seen... no cars... no people... no parks or trees... not even the vast Lake.  Just the top of one building after another, the well known ones discernable and rising above the others, the others just collectively contributing to the awesomeness (yes, Dad, awesome) of the City... my City.

That's what you'd see in the picture, certainly worth more than a glance.  What makes this my favorite view is the experience of seeing it slowly emerge from behind the blanket of ordinary as I'd ride up that bridge on Halsted just south of that intersection. At the risk of being dramatic, it's simply breathtaking.

Living in the suburbs now, the opportunities I have to catch that view are few and far between.  I can't tell you the last time I experienced it.  Early in one of my recent half-hour rides from home to the train station for my trip in to the City for a day's work, I was taken back to those days of riding down Halsted and had a similar experience, witnessing the hidden beauty of something I knew was waiting for me but that I couldn't yet see from my obstructed view.

It was dawn, and the sun hadn't yet made its full appearance for its day's work.  It was trying, though, and I knew this.  I had just gotten on the prairie path, the first major third of my trip downtown to the train station.  A fog was slowly lifting off of the prairie grasses -- I could feel the heat from the grasses mixing with the cool morning air and smell the wetness of the grasses whose dew hadn't yet evaporated in the heat of the sun. A rabbit scurried across the path in front of me and toward an unusual patch of trees to the east.  My eyes followed him; and as he disappeared into the grasses, my eyes continued moving along that same line and eventually landed on the trees.

My sunrise that morning on the prairie path

I cycled forward, the gravel path crunching beneath the weight of my bike and me.  With every turn of my wheels, the blanket of trees slowly slipped off the view they were unintentionally hiding.  It was a remarkable view of an everyday, familiar occurrence -- the sun rising in the morning sky; and I just could not have imagined how simply beautiful and breathtaking it would be at that very moment if I hadn't experienced it.  Everything that I had taken in in the minutes leading up to that moment that sun was revealed to me made it that much more wonderous than it was in the snapshot.

So what does this have to do with the Leatherkids? Afterall, they weren't with me to witness and share this. Frankly, they weren't even a thought in my head at the time (not one I knew about, anyway, as they are always in there). I just hope that one day when they're ready they'll read this and be inspired to appreciate the remarkableness that might be hidden in the ordinary.  It need not be the City's skyline or a sunrise over the praire path, either.  Whatever it is, I just hope that it is.  If I can teach them or influence them to appreciate more than what they see in the everday ordinary, I will have passed along something that's important to me and that genuinely and very simply makes me happy.