Sometimes, it takes longer for sun to come up

It takes longer for the sun to wake up in the mountains. There is more work to do.

Those first rays must pull on their climbing gear before they are ushered over the summit and into view.

As I write this, I am watching the sun rise from the back porch of a mountain cabin. The dawn’s early light is subdued by the clouds, but I am not complaining. God’s majesty has gifted us with another day.

My wife and I recently spent a few “mental health” days at a friend’s cabin in the hills near Blue Ridge. There is a stillness on the mountain top you don’t get in the city. The quiet makes you wonder if nature hit the “mute” button. Or need to have your hearing checked.

Early that morning, I watched a doe and her three young ‘uns circle the thicket on the back slope. The mother, her ears like antennas, nervously watched as I drank my coffee.

I wanted to tell her to relax. Hakuna matata. I am not a hunter. I was not carrying a concealed weapon, except for a roller ball pen, which has been known to inflict damage.

I was simply a curious guest sharing their forest, not an intruder. They could carry on with their breakfast. I would not interrupt.

There was other documented wildlife around, and the cabin’s guestbook included a history of logged entries of numerous critter sightings. My wife and I decided to take a pass on any hiking. We don’t care for snakes and mean dogs. We are getting too old to outrun any bears. (Or climb any trees.)

We have since come down from the mountain, like Moses, but iPads are the only tablets we carried.

If the views don’t humble and amaze you, they should. This isn’t your show. It’s their show. One of my favorite quotations is from historian David McCullough: “Climb the mountains so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.’’

It was good to get away for a few days. There were welcome changes of scenery filled with backdrops of whitewater rapids, apple orchards and rural cemeteries. There are no HOV lanes on mountain roads. If you can wean yourself from emails and the Twitterverse, your “live streaming” can be mountain brooks and waterfalls.

The North Georgia mountains are lovely this time of year and should be hitting their peak next week. However, Delinda made it clear to me – especially driving around all those nail-biting mountain curves -- she is still a beach girl at heart.

It was glorious to stretch my eyes across some of the same valleys where I once went to church youth camp in the summers. It was therapeutic to fill my lungs at higher altitudes, where the air is cooler and fresher.

It also was wonderful not to have to wear a mask all the time. was in the great outdoors and there hardly was anyone else around. There aren’t many “super spreaders’’ in the hills, unless you count the mountain laurel. Spatial distancing outranks social distancing.

It was a time to break free of live wires and white noise, to rise above the gloom-and-doom headlines. It was a chance to be more visual than virtual.

In a year with cursed numbers, when the world ran out of toilet paper and names for hurricanes, I know I can’t snap my fingers and make the bad stuff go away. I can’t avoid it or even deflect it.

There are no higher elevations that can rise above it. It’s still going to be around.

I’ll just keep taking my temperature every time I leave the house and hope for the best.

Sometimes it takes the sun longer to come up. I will keep reminding myself patience is a virtue.

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.