{ night wanders, 001 }
for this we go out dark nights, searching
for the dimmest stars,
for signs of unseen things.
[Rebecca Elson, astronomer & poet]
I didn’t take a headlamp with me into the dark of night. It was nearing the new moon, so there was no hope of lunar light on my midnight wander. There are many different kinds of darkness, though, and the high desert nights here feel a bit less apt to swallow you whole than for instance, the rich woods of the northern Vermont forests. In those damp lush woodlands of my childhood, the body disappears entirely into the mossy mouth of night.
There is a spaciousness to the high desert landscape that allows a certain subtle light to permeate the night. It is the clear open sky of high altitude starlight, perhaps, and the presence of exposed sand and stone to reflect it. With large beings like trees and rocks somewhat visible, walking in the dark is a little less daunting.
This did not, however, change the fact that I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. I crept slowly, letting each foot curiously sense what lay beneath it. I wrote scrambled thoughts in my journal without being able to see the page before me, or whether the pen was even working. Deciphering my own script the next morning was a sort of mystical task, with many lines written over each other. There was an eeriness to decoding these scribbled night glyphs, as though it had been written by the darkness herself.
Finding one’s way through the dark is one thing. Remembering which way you came, or how to get back, is entirely another. Part of the alchemical magic of the dark is in how innately disorienting it is. All logic dissolves. Everything dissolves, and the mind can no longer guide us: only our instinct can carry us through the realms of the unseen. For many of us, that embodied instinct has been long-suppressed, and dwells dormant under many layers of the human mind’s need to know, and our maladaptive fear response to wild nature. This includes a fear of our own wild nature. Instinct is the body’s most ancient tool, and it needs to be well-tended and routinely sharpened, just like any favorite knife or garden spade. When the mind meets the terrifying edge of the unknown, uncurl your fist and extend the sharp claws of your instinct.
On night walks, I seem to always experience at least one unhinged moment of absolute certainty that I have gotten deeply, hopelessly lost. It happened again on this most recent wander- I could not remember how far I had wandered from the path, or which direction it even was. All I could see were the towering silhouettes of ponderosa treetops in the stars. As the unknown seeps in, the mind starts to spin. I instantly begin to imagine myself having to curl up, forlorn, by a rock, listening to the coyotes cackle wildly from just down the canyon, waiting for the mercy of dawn to finally grant me permission to leave. The initial thrill and mystique of a night wander will inevitably reveal its haunting intricacies. The dark is not just full of surprises: it is woven from mystery itself.
The next morning, waking up safe in my bed and recalling that moment of visceral panic, a slow, sweet smile graces my lips. Like I have just been told a particularly delicious and wicked secret. I feel remnants of a distant cackle caught in my throat, and a craving to be lost again in the otherworld of the invisible canyon, with the bone-chilling yips of the coyotes. A longing to go back and let the night swallow me whole. To be as feral, mysterious, instinctual and brave as the other ones who wander in the dark. This is the kind of edgy, dangerous allurement that speaks directly to the wild longings of the human soul.
I am definitely not sharing this to invite anyone on a night wander without a flashlight or taking other basic safety precautions (please don’t). But what I do want to share with you is that I was once so scared of the dark, that I would often hide under my covers at night in an inexplicable terror. It didn’t matter how many times I had peeked into all the closets. This kind of fear was nonspecific, a bone-deep aversion to the unknown and the unseen, and a learned abandonment of embodied instinct. I could call it a fear of my own ghosts, of shadow.
For me, this metaphor carried into my adult way of being in the world. I needed to “know” everything, as a means of self-protection. I couldn’t admit to myself how deeply I longed to feel every one of my hairs stand on end, as I stood alone and faced the unknown dark of night.
At some point, I became curious about my own fear. And curiosity, in its inherent acknowledgement of the unknown, is an opening into courage. Anything I was that afraid of must be a doorway into some sort of hidden instinctual magic.
And so I began to wander in the dark. In the face of what terrified me, I began to sharpen my claws.
we say the dreams of night
are within us
as blood within flesh
as spirit within substance
as the oneness of things
as from a dust of pigeons
the white light of wings.
[Rebecca Elson]
{part 2, when the night-blooming flowers arrive, coming next week}
I’ve always been afraid of the dark, so I applaud your courage at going for midnight walks!