Let's try a little experiment. Set your alarm clock for an ungodly hour tomorrow morning, if you aren't already in the habit of doing so. If you groan or bristle at the thought of arising twenty or so minutes before the sun's first light, turn off Konan or the guy with glasses and the annoying gray tuft on his balding head, and go to bed early.
I live on acreage with (mostly) quiet neighbors and little nearby traffic, so this might work for me a little better than for you. However, while living in crowded southern California years ago, I had the same pleasant experience; if it can be done there, it can be done anywhere.
Now that you're awake, go outside. If it hasn't rained in the wee hours, dew will most likely cover nearly everything, and the air will be cool, so you might want to dress accordingly. Unless a cold front has crashed through and wiped out the desired atmospheric conditions, the air a few hundred feet above you will be markedly warmer than at the surface. (I'm taking the liberty of assuming a cloudless night with little or no air movement.) Assuming the aforementioned, an atmospheric inversion will be in place, and you will experience an interesting phenomenon.
Distant (up to a mile or so) noise is trapped under the inversion and will reflect off the cold-air/warm-air interface, returning to your ears quite loudly. This accounts for the interesting effect of sound waves carrying much farther than they do under typical daytime weather conditions, after the sun has warmed the ground and eroded the inversion. This ducting effect explains why a far-away moving vehicle sounds as if it is mere feet from you.
Welcome to Physics 101.
Now let's assume there is no traffic--perhaps it is a weekend or holiday morning, or you're lucky enough to live in a rural area. Perfect. You will find the quiet to be deafening, transcendental, and dare I use the word cosmic? Compared to the racket made by vehicles and noisy neighbors, the calm cannot be described.
Later, as the first hint of sunlight appears in the eastern sky, birds will awake and begin to chirp. If you're a coffee drinker as I am, the pleasant aroma will add to the effect as you sip your brew and feel its invigorating effects.
If you've followed my plan and not cheated by sneaking back to bed, you will greet the dawn with a euphoria that eclipses whatever benefit you might have had from watching the late-night clown shows, though modern technology has afforded you the luxury of recording their 11 o'clock antics, which I understand most people to do. In addition, you now have a whole day ahead of you.
Of course this all washes out if you're a night person as I used to be.
Perhaps I'm just getting older and am heeding the words of Ben Franklin.
