In 2019, Bugsy Sailor made a New Year’s resolution to watch every sunrise of that year. He wanted to spend more time in nature, more time with his camera and live life to the fullest.
“I didn't tell anybody I was gonna be doing this until I got through one month of watching sunrise,” he said. “And that's in January on Lake Superior.”
Now almost seven years later, he’s still setting his alarm every morning, and thousands of fans follow along on social media and beyond. Bugsy is the sunrise guy.
But the creative drive which started the sunrise project will also be the thing that ends it. More and more, Bugsy thinks about wrapping the project up. But who is he without sunrise?
“My identity is so wrapped into this,” Bugsy said. “It's kind of scary to think, ‘Who am I?’ What else is out there if I stop watching sunrise?”
CREDITS:
Producer / Host: Dan Wanschura
Editor: Ellie Katz
Additional Editing: Peter Payette, Claire Keenan-Kurgan
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
If you’re inspired to watch more sunrises, Bugsy Sailor invites you to sign 'The Sunrise Pledge'.
TRANSCRIPT:
DAN WANSCHURA, BYLINE: It’s still dark when I meet Bugsy Sailor outside his apartment.
WANSCHURA: Bugsy!
BUGSY SAILOR: Hey hey! … Ready to go.
WANSCHURA: Yeah.
SAILOR: Let me make some room in my front seat.
WANSCHURA: We head for his car. A bright blue Ford Focus hatchback. The side windows are frosted up. He fiddles with opening and closing them.
(sounds of driving)
WANSCHURA: So, are you normally a morning guy?
BUGSY SAILOR: I consider myself a morning person by brute force. … It's a three, three alarm system where … the first alarm is just to kinda like jolt me awake and just to like, get me going for the morning. And then it gives me maybe 15 minutes just to kind of like lay in bed, like kind of slowly wake up and then there is a second alarm that's like, ‘Okay, it's time to get moving.’ And if I don't get up at the second alarm, there's the third alarm, which is the panic alarm.
WANSCHURA: I bet you’ve been in this situation before. I have. Ya got something really important early the next morning so you set a backup for your backup alarm. But that’s probably where the similarities end. Because Bugsy has been doing this every single morning since January 1, 2019.
His goal: to watch the sunrise and photograph it.
SAILOR: There's no emails, there's no social media. I don't brush my teeth until I'm back from sunrise. There's no coffee, there's no food. Like everything else comes after sunrise.
WANSCHURA: A lot of mornings, Bugsy walks out his front door in Marquette, Michigan – to a nearby beach. But other days – like when he has a podcast producer following him around – he’ll hop in his car and drive somewhere special.
SAILOR: We are headed to probably my favorite sunrise location in Marquette County, which is called Little Presque Isle. …right on the shores of Lake Superior.
WANSCHURA: This is Points North, a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. I’m Dan Wanschura.
Earlier this month, Bugsy Sailor notched 25-hundred sunrises. Why does he do it? And will he ever stop? Stay tuned.
(sound of footsteps)
WANSCHURA: Bugsy Sailor is in his early 40s. He’s got wild hair and a reddish mustache. He grew up in Baraga, Michigan – a small village on Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula. And his real name is actually Justin – his mom started calling him Bugsy when he was one, and the name stuck. He went to Michigan State University for college and stuck around Lansing for a while. But he says there was always this pull back to the U.P.
SAILOR: But I think really it was this magnetic kind of attraction to get back to the lake … and I've always joked that my soul is buried somewhere out there in the lake and I don't need to retrieve it can stay out there. I'll just come and visit once in a while or every day. And a lot of sunrises, kind of the goal is to get as close to the water as possible. Like, to the water we go.
(sound of footsteps)
WANSCHURA: Wow. This is beautiful.
WANSCHURA: Straight ahead of us is Little Presque Isle. It’s this small, rocky island about 100 yards into Lake Superior.
SAILOR: Yeah, this is it. I love when you walk up to this point, it's kind of a grand reveal.
WANSCHURA: Oh my gosh, yeah.
SAILOR: It's just, it's just magical.
WANSCHURA: We’re here early. About 20 minutes before sunrise but the sky is quickly filling with light.
SAILOR: Just a beautiful gradient. One of my favorites is just that orange to pale blue to purple gradients over the horizon. … You can definitely see some colors in the trees. And it's quite beautiful. And as soon as the sun's over the horizon, those are really gonna light up nicely.
WANSCHURA: In 2012, Bugsy had the realization many of us do when we reach a certain stage of adulthood: The late-night party expectation of New Year's Eve is kinda overrated. So, he started this tradition of doing the exact opposite: instead of staying up late on New Year’s Eve – he’d wake up super early and watch the first sunrise of the new year.
SAILOR: And I loved it. … And got to the point where I questioned why am I not doing this more?
WANSCHURA: In 2019, he made this resolution.
SAILOR: The commitment was every sunrise of 2019. More time outside. Get back into photography. ... I didn't tell anybody I was gonna be doing this until I got through one month of watching Sunrise, and that's in January on Lake Superior. Like that's, it's a tough time to like find the rhythm with that project. And I got through a month and then I started telling people about it.
WANSCHURA: Months went by. And as 2019 wrapped up, Bugsy wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep it going. But then he had this aha moment.
SAILOR: All year I had been telling people, ‘Hey, if you enjoy this project, watch more sunrises.’ You know, ‘Watch more sunrises than you did in the year prior.’ … And I have this revelation that, ‘Oh, it's 2020 now and it's a leap year.’ I can actually watch 366 sunrises in 2020 and fulfill sort of the same thing I'd been telling everybody to do, watch more sunrises this year than you did last. I was like, ‘Well, I can't tell people that and not do it myself.’ And instantly I knew there was no debate, there was no internal dialogue. I made that realization and I was like, ‘That's it. I’m committed to another year.’
WANSCHURA: 2020 came and went. Then 2021 and 2022.
SAILOR: Good morning, from the beautiful shores of Lake Superior. This is consecutive sunrise 1,116. It’s about a -15 degree windchill.
WANSCHURA: Bugsy posted his daily sunrises on Instagram. Thousands of people followed along.
SAILOR: Wherever you are, I hope you find the joy, the play, and the delight in nature. It stays with ya. Anyhow, have fun, we’ll see you soon, bye.
WANSCHURA: He also created this huge photo gallery in his retail shop in downtown Marquette. 365 sunrise pictures – all laid out on one wall. It became this destination for fans. They could buy the photos and sign the sunrise pledge – this document that says they’re committing to watching more sunrises this year than the previous one. Bugsy grew into this sort of legend. He was the sunrise guy.
(Instagram montage)
SAILOR: Good morning, from the beautiful shores of Lake Superior.
SAILOR: Come on, let’s go watch sunrise together.
SAILOR: We’re at Black Rocks. The wind is mighty, the waves are incredible. … This is what I’m talking about. Haha, alright let’s go.
WANSCHURA: People from all over the world would chime in with comments like, “Your beautiful stunning sunrises and your words help ground me, they put things into perspective … and give me hope.”
Bugsy felt like what he was doing was the most significant way he’s impacted the world.
(Instagram montage)
SAILOR: Good morning, from the beautiful shores…
SAILOR: Had a hard time getting out of bed this morning, but excited to be out here now.
SAILOR: So get out there, catch the sunrise tomorrow. You know I’ll be out there. And we’ll see you soon. Alright, bye.
SAILOR: At its core for me is I think taking the old idea of living every day to the fullest. Again, it's a nice ideal, but I think in reality that's an impossible thing to do, but we should strive towards it, absolutely. And if you skip sunrise, you're already behind on that. So, the only way I feel that you can truly live life to the fullest, is if you are up and out the door at sunrise and watch sunrise.
WANSCHURA: Then one day in September 2023, everything changed. His phone died overnight. His charging cable wasn’t plugged in all the way, which meant none of the alarms he set – went off.
SAILOR: I woke up in this extremely bright room. It was a clear sunny morning.
WANSCHURA: For the first time in 1,718 days, Bugsy didn’t see the sunrise.
SAILOR: This sounds overly dramatic, but like the whole cliche of like, like dying and seeing pure white everywhere or something… but like waking up in a fully-lit room is something I don’t do. And that was a bizarre feeling. … And I realized what was happening and I was mortified. … Sunrise was probably about 7:30 that time of year. I think I woke up like quarter after eight.
But yeah, it was panic. And then I think the emotional turmoil of it was later in that day, like a little bit of embarrassment, sadness. … There was a brief second where I was like, I could fake this. I could use a photo from a different morning and nobody would know. Nobody would know. But I was like, ‘Ah, I'm a man of integrity. So I was like, I guess I gotta just come clean with this.
WANSCHURA: Later that day, Bugsy sat down with his thoughts and wrote a long blog post.
SAILOR: Yesterday I was writing about how fleeting the moment of sunrise is. If my streak was running for 1,719 consecutive days, I could still go for a run later today. If my streak was surfing for 1,719 consecutive days … I could still get into the water later today. But sunrise is gone, it happened, there’s no going back, there’s no second chance. I think that’s the significance of this particular streak. There was not a 24-hour window in which I had the luxury to choose when I would go out and watch sunrise. There was only a moment, the slimmest of moments, often at an ungodly hour during inclement weather. … There have been close calls before. … But never have I been dead asleep through sunrise.
WANSCHURA: If he could go back in time – he would. The sunrise streak meant a lot to him. It was his life. But the good thing about sunrise is, you only have to wait 24 hours til the next one.
SAILOR: Well before I missed that sunrise, the sort of slogan I've been telling everybody for years is, ‘The sun still rises.’ And, and it does. … It's so simple. The sun still rises and we still have to get up and face the day.
(sound of Lake Superior waves)
WANSCHURA: Not all sunrises are created equal. Some are just kinda blah. Bugsy once had a stretch of 17 days in a row where he didn’t actually see the sun at sunrise. But today isn’t one of those days.
WANSCHURA: Sun's now peaking up over Lake Superior. Beautiful. There's like purple and gold and blue shades on the water right now.
WANSCHURA: So what does watching something like this do for you? Bugsy?
SAILOR: You know, like finding more presence in the world, more peace, you know, like dedicating time to reset and relax and not just like waking up and going straight into the busyness of the world every single day.
WANSCHURA: But Bugsy is a project guy. He loves documenting. He loves seeing the photos of consecutive days on the sunrise gallery wall. And that motivation is a blessing and a curse.
WANSCHURA: Is there ever a tension for you of like being here, experiencing it, yet still trying to find the perfect shot and trying to photograph it and sort of live through the camera lens versus just take it in?
SAILOR: Oh yeah, absolutely. The photography is still a device. Like I'm literally putting a device between me and that beautiful moment every single day. … Ironically, what's happened is if I go and watch Sunset, I never bring my camera, but I feel more present at sunset than I do sunrise because I don't have that extra task to do.
WANSCHURA: The drive to create fuels the sunrise project. It feeds his business. It keeps him going. But it’s also the thing that will end it.
SAILOR: The amount of time I think of wrapping up this project is growing. … It's not that I'm tired of getting up and out the door for sunrise. That part I don't worry about, but is the upkeep of the project. … It is the maintenance of the website, the social media, the print management, the gallery wall. That is daunting. And I'm so far behind on photo editing I'll never catch up. And if I want to take on new projects, which I do like, something has to go. And I think what's going to win in the end is that I'm just some point probably gonna make a choice of like, ‘I want to do something else,’ rather than tiring of sunrise.
I'm so intertwined with this. It's like, who is, ‘Who is Bugsy without sunrise?’ You know, like what's my identity? It's like my identity is so wrapped into this. It's kind of scary to think, ‘Who am I?’ What else is out there if I stop watching sunrise?
