A shared sunset will stir fiery passions. But for quiet contemplation, there's nothing like the hush at daybreak.
Watching the world awaken is profoundly different from seeing it burn out at sunset - more gentle Monet than bold Matisse.
And less common. It takes a concerted effort to catch a sunrise. You have to leave the comfort of bed and forgo an extra hour or two of sleep. You also have to leave the house and seek out an east-facing spot to catch the full impact of those "God rays," as Kenwood landscape photographer Robert Janover calls the powerful first beams of day.
Throughout the North Bay, the Christian faithful gathered at dawn for traditional Easter sunrise services. According to Biblical scripture, it was at dawn that a group of women, including Mary Magdalene, went to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body but found the massive stone had been rolled away and Christ's body gone.
The association of dawn with renewal, birth and resurrection, however, stretches back even deeper into cultural practices, said Sonoma State psychology professor Shepherd Bliss, who is also an ordained Methodist minister and farmer.
"Long before Christianity, the pagans were worshiping the sun and there were nature-based religions. It links Christianity to pre-Christian times, not only with the sun," but with stories of resurrection, like the myth of Orpheus, the father of music and poetry, who was killed worshipping the sun god at dawn.
"He had a descent like Jesus and then he rose to continue singing even though he had perished," Bliss said.
As for himself, Bliss said he takes primal comfort at dawn, a time of day that draws him back to childhood days on the farm, when first light conjured up the aroma of pancakes and cinnamon rolls and the sounds of roosters crowing and chickens clucking.
To best experience the quickening of day, seek out a spot where you can follow the light and that is accessible and reasonably safe in the dark.
Autumn Summers, who works for Sonoma LandPaths, a nonprofit organization that works to connect people with nature, likes the reflected early light over the Laguna de Santa Rosa. And an easy spot from which to experience it is at the Laguna Uplands, a small preserve of the Laguna Foundation, accessible at the end of Palm Avenue behind Sebastopol's Palm Drive Hospital.
"It's quiet and misty and you can hear the hawks calling to one another. There are kites and kestrels," she said, with views that open out to the Santa Rosa plain and Taylor Mountain.
Sunrise, she said, is a hopeful time. "There is something about starting the day with the sunrise that make you feel like you've gotten ahead of everyone else. There's so much in front of you."
Summers also likes to catch the day atop Mt. St. Helena, taking the trail at Robert Louis Stevenson State Park on Highway 29. She traditionally makes the hike on New Year's morning for the 360-degree views. But in early spring, the weather is even more accommodating. Bring a headlamp or flashlight.
"It's the darkest time of the day and as you're walking up the peak the sky is lightening," she said. At the summit on a clear day you may see the sun rising over the Sierras. But even if a blanket of fog lies over the valley, you find yourself above it, she said, and it's a sight to behold illuminated underneath by lights in the valley and from above as the sun ascends.
Jonathan Glass, field programs director for LandPaths, says a serene spot to welcome the day with wildlife is the estuary at Jenner. It's even better if you can put in a canoe or kayak at Valley Ford. He likes to do "dawn patrol" for birding, and here the color palette is more subtle early in the day. Wildlife is active so you may see osprey, kites, blue herons, egrets and maybe even a young bald eagle.
For a sweeping marsh view at dawn, catch The Bay Trail off Highway 37 south of Petaluma.
It's an easy 3-mile roundtrip into the tidal marshes from the parking lot at Port Sonoma. From here, said Sheri Cardo of the nonprofit land conservancy the Sonoma Land Trust, the soft reds and pinks that color the vast bay wetlands at sunrise are like an Impressionist painting, with the San Pablo Bay, Mt. Diablo and San Francisco off in the distance.
Marsha Connell, a plein-air painter and Santa Rosa Junior College teacher, has spent the past year capturing the incandescence of Pepperwood Preserve off Mark West Springs Road in Santa Rosa.
That first light of day after sunrise has a special allure 1,000 feet above the Santa Rosa plain.
"I've seen it a number of times in different ways and it has become a very special experience to have the world bathed and wrapped in its fog blanket and then have the light gradually appear," she said. "And then you get these beautiful strong shadows early in the morning."
While the preserve is not generally open to the public, one can get similar views from the road if you take Franz Valley Road off Mark West Springs.
As a landscape photographer who for years has published a calendar of spectacular Sonoma County scenes, Robert Janover is a student of light and is constantly seeking out those perfect spots where light meets landscape. Dawn light has a distinct quality, he said.
"It's bluer. Very crisp and clean and cold. Whereas sunsets are golden."
You don't have to hike into the wilderness or scale a mountain to experience the majesty of a Sonoma sunrise, he said. The Petaluma River Turning Basin downtown offers a different perspective of bobbing boats and the silhouetted cityscape reflected in the water. Or, he said, find the pullout popularly known as "the rock" on Coleman Valley Road outside Occidental. While you won't see the sun rising, as you are looking west, you can see how the sunlight slowly illuminates the sea.
"I've seen so many sunrises. I like to see the actual lighting of the land rather than the direct ball of sun popping up. There are different textures of light and at certain times there are clouds on every horizon. Then I'm a basket case. Which direction to look?"
Sharon Landon is a graphic designer and photographer whose art is focused on sunrises. And she finds some particularly satisfying ones only a quarter mile from her Rohnert Park home, looking into the fields along Petaluma Hill Road.
She's intrigued by the graphic quality of the light at dawn, as seen through through dark tree branches. The sunlight is the icing on those silhouettes.
"Dawn," she said, "is visual and spiritual. Sometimes I feel like God has painted the sky especially for my pleasure and I'm amazed at how different each sunrise is. Sometimes they're orange. Sometimes they're purple. It's always something totally unexpected and it always takes my breath away."
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat
.com.
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