00:06Europe is where my ancestors came from, somewhere along the prime meridian.
00:12It's the perfect place to bring sunrise Earth,
00:15to witness the dawn near that starting line of the world's daily rotation.
00:23Time today is a funny thing, so rushed.
00:26We begin our days with atomic alarm clocks.
00:30We can shop for food in the middle of the night, send emails, one minute, get a reply the next.
00:35But for millennia, our pace was the sun's pace.
00:40Our order was the sun's order.
01:15The first stop was Iceland, a land of fire, ice, and the northern sun.
01:21When we were driving in, it was beautiful, kind of empty, snowless plains.
01:27Late winter, getting ready for spring.
01:29Yeah, somewhere deep underneath, we're on the mid-Atlantic ridge.
01:32And you got some serious energy coming up this area.
01:36Then, boom, we got hit with a blizzard that was right out of the middle of winter.
01:41The reality is that you get anywhere near the Arctic any time of year, and you could end up with
01:46weather like this.
01:48More than one occasion, I'd turn to Daniel and say,
01:51Did we check what season this was?
01:54You know, we were hoping it was going to be spring.
01:55The two big problems are keeping the snowflakes off of the lens and the viewfinder.
02:03Even the tiniest little speck shows up like a huge glop on your lens.
02:14You know, one thing I've learned is that you never know.
02:18We get lucky.
02:19The sun could pop out.
02:20There could be a rainbow this morning.
02:25The sun could pop out.
02:26The sun could pop out.
02:45With a fresh blanket of new snow, we arrived at the highest volume waterfall in Europe.
02:54It's name, Gullfoss, means golden falls.
02:59Inspired by the effect of sunlight mixed with nearly constant mist.
03:10It's a strange thing.
03:12Ravens seem to show up wherever sunrise Earth goes.
03:16My dad told me once that the Norse used to navigate with them.
03:22This river comes from a glacier 25 miles away.
03:28Witnessing its power over time.
03:30Carving down through the volcanic rock that once oozed up out of the North Atlantic ridge.
03:35The experience is totally mesmerizing.
03:41On an almost genetic level.
03:52The experience is totally mesmerizing.
03:56On an almost genetic level.
04:10On an almost genetic level.
04:13Across the continent from Iceland, and about 50 degrees warmer, we saw the dawn in a 2,800-year-old
04:19Turkish village called Aspendos.
04:25These aqueducts, built around 125 A.D. by the Romans, carried water from the foothills of the Anatolian Plateau.
04:33How high up is that?
04:35How high up is that?
04:35That's 10 degrees above.
04:42Okay.
04:44Here, human history is so thick in the air, you can almost breathe it in.
04:50The slow pace of civilizations changing.
04:55Light, then shadow, then light.
05:00Each sunrise, leaving one more line in the faces of those who see it.
05:18We move south to the Mediterranean Sea, and set up in the ancient seaport of Antalya.
05:29Each morning here, boats set off looking for tuna, sardines, squid and shrimp.
05:44Sunrise rituals march on.
05:46Whether the sun makes a big entrance, or, on this morning, stays mysteriously hidden above a veil of clouds.
06:12David's going to get the van.
06:15We're just outside of Stonehenge, Southbury, England.
06:20It's just a little after 5 in the morning.
06:23And we're watching a light drizzle come down, but David's excited because there's three stars.
06:29I would look at the conditions outside and just go back to bed.
06:32I saw three stars up there today.
06:34That's what I understand.
06:36And I actually saw one when I first looked up.
06:40Well, I think it's going to turn into a magical sort of morning.
06:43That's what I think.
07:01This is the first sunrise earth where it's been raining at sunrise.
07:05But I see rain and sun.
07:07Both!
07:13In fact, the best sunrises are those that flirt with the dark side.
07:27The sun's coming across the fields right now.
07:31Just minutes.
07:33I don't know exactly through which one of these rocks it's going to come.
07:39Daniel, do you think it's going to come over that horizontal piece, or up through here?
07:45Who knows why the builders of Stonehenge dragged these stones here?
07:51Oh, man.
07:53It obviously took a lot of effort.
07:55And not just the first stones some 5,000 years ago.
07:59Other builders renovated 1,000 years later.
08:03And then others.
08:05To see these stones, the way they captured the light.
08:08While we were there with our HD cameras also trying to capture the light,
08:11it was almost like two eras in history separated by thousands of years,
08:16both basically trying to create some sort of relationship with the sun.
08:33I feel a link here in Europe to a world much older, much bigger than my own.
08:40time ticking
08:42for each living thing
08:45with each turn of the planet
08:48each circling of the sun.
08:51I'm David Conover.
08:52Join us here in Europe for Sunrise Earth.
09:01Thanks for your attention.
Comments