The Experience of Night

Have you experienced night?

Not the manmade artifice of twinkling lights and traffic sounds that passes for night when the sun is on the other side of the earth. That is Experience, but that is not Night.

I’m talking about the stillness of a night walk across a field in January. Moon not yet risen, all is black as ink – you cannot see the ground. The air is motionless, felt only as a winter chill that stings your cheeks as you pass through. No sound. Yesterday’s sun has melted the snow and bared the ground – soles step lightly, silently. Not a dog barks, nor coyote howls. Not even the soft bleat of doe calling to fawn. Silence. Stillness. None moves but you. Above, Orion fords the river of the Milky Way while Mars waits near the shore. Stars – so many stars. Whoever would have guessed so many? What be their names? Where, the constellations? The Big Dipper appears as though flung by a mighty giant across a great expanse, drops of light spilling as it tumbles. Your tread must be your sight, feeling your way – here the track, there the grass cushion between – across the mile of lowly hill from barn to house. What moves into the night as you pass? A rabbit? Weasel? You pause and look into the darkness with no ability to discern what is there and what is not. The sky shows you the wide world of vast, unbroken horizons, your senses feeling Emptiness. How can a world so vast, so full of life, divulge nothing? Not a sight, nor sound, nor sense of movement. There is only You, as you pass silently through darkness.

That is Night.

I’m talking about a crisp moonlit October night. Through the branches, cloud children play tag by the light of the moon. Breezes shake the last dry leaves from twigs, and chase them across the hardening ground. Shadow and light dance across the earth. The musky fall scent of browning leaves fills the air – here maple, there poplar and cottonwood. Dried grass crunches beneath your feet. A nameless energy builds upon the wind, and as the breeze tousles your hair, you become vibrant – a wild thing – a creature of the night. You break into a run, joining the games of the young clouds above, and gallop across the silver patches of light playing across the ground. Trotting down a woodsy path, you feel the earth spring beneath your feet as sodden leaves decay into the soil. Leaves rustle and chase one another between the trees. You and the wild winds of the darkness become one.

That is Night.

You sit on a country porch, and listen to the wooden runners of your chair gently rumbling cross-grain against the wooden floor as you rock amid a summer night. It’s just warm enough. The air is humid on your arms, on your face, as you gently move – forward and back, forward and back. Overcast blocks the pinprick lamps from above, and darkens the night. Yet dogwood blossoms glow as though lit from within. The paint is peeling from the flat arms of your chair. Under your fingers, a brittle chip flakes off, exposing rough hard wood. … Forward and back, forward and back. … Breathe in, breathe out. …Breathe in, breathe out. …The smell of rich, dank mud rises with the day’s heat from the cooling marsh. The barest hint of steam rises like ephemeral quicksilver and hovers ever so lightly. … Listen. …Spring peepers sing for joy; frogs serenade their mates. From above comes the squawking chirp of a nighthawk. Katydids in the wheatgrass, and a cricket behind the rough-barked oak. Just a hint of soughing in the pines by the lazy creek when a gentle breeze caresses the night as a living thing. You feel it, gentle and warm, like a soft cloak. The smells, the sounds, the dampness of the night – you breathe them in. All soak into your skin, all the way to the bones – and you become one.

That is Night.

Back at the barn, you hang the lantern on a peg while you bed down your mare for the night. A goodly wafer of hay in the manger, a ration of oats, and an affectionate scratch under the graying mane – then you perch on the other manger to linger a while as she chews. She shuffles her feet, and dust motes rise from the straw, floating golden like ghostly fairies, gilded by the yellow lantern’s glow. Soft lips muffle the gentle crunch of contented teeth on oats and corn – the most soothing of sounds to comfort day’s end. A sleepy munch, munch, munch…all’s right with the world.

That is Night.

Good Night, and sweet dreams!

© May 2022