Red Morning
Across the Pacific
On Sunday night — Monday morning, really — I couldn’t sleep. At 3.30 a.m., I got out of bed, swore a lot about insomnia, and decided to do some work. It’s not really insomnia: it’s stress. Things are insecure at the moment, and that uncertainty has both physical and mental impacts. Broken sleep is one of them.
The night had been clear, but half an hour before dawn, fog rolled in. Then the sky turned red and purple, the colours of a fresh bruise. The view was so arresting, I pressed the phone against the window and took a photo. It was fleeting too. Within minutes, the colour had faded, burned out by the rising sun.
The spectacle had its origins far to the east.
On Saturday, the huge eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga sent ash clouds into the atmosphere. Within two days, winds carried the ash more than 4,000 kilometres west across the Coral Sea. The vivid colours of the dawn came from sunlight shining through particles suspended high above.
As I write this, the people of Tonga are still counting the loss of life and the destruction to homes and livelihoods. This sunrise was born from devastation.
