By living in the city, with its smog, lights, and noise, people miss many things in the natural world. I admit I loathe living in the city with the same passion that I love the empty land of back roads. So, I am biased. Sometimes, I think those city dwellers can’t even dream of the things they miss, caught up in the hustle and bustle and glaring lights of their manufactured existence.
“Oh,” they might say. “Like what?”
Like the night.
An answer like that will only get you the strangest looks.
It seems the darkness of night is something to be escaped in the city. It is a frightening thing, a thing to be banished with street lights, front porch lights, and motion sensing lights. Night is danger. Hide from the night.
I don’t doubt that, with all the violent crime in cities, this is a very prudent way of living. And I suppose it is a habit of living that is hard to break. People who come in from the city say, “How can you go outside without a light? Don’t you need a flashlight?” And, “I couldn’t stand living out here. There aren’t any street lights. Aren’t you afraid to have no street lights?”
But–though it may shock all you city dwellers to hear this–it isn’t like that in the country. You don’t need to think about robbery and violence. You can go out walking in the cool darkness of the summer nights and hear the night bugs chirrup. You can walk or just sit out in the darkness and think, relaxing in the stillness of the world at rest.
People always talk about how dark the night is but in the country night is rarely so dark that one cannot see. Yes, if you are out in a stormy rain-drenched night it is pitch dark, but on any normal night the light of the stars shows the shape of the world to the eye accustomed to the dim reality. It isn’t an inability to see, it is seeing differently.
And sometimes . . . sometimes . . . the night becomes an occasion of breathtaking beauty.
A few nights ago there was a full summer moon. I came downstairs in the middle of the night to use the bathroom (I leave the lights off whenever possible because I find it more comfortable to navigate in the dark) and happened to glance out the front door. The moon hung low over the trees and pale light poured through the windows.
It was–perhaps you won’t understand–a painfully beautiful sight. It didn’t look like night outside–it looked like a different kind of day, as if the sun had turned to silver. The entire sky was a pale silver sheen, seeming to blaze with a cool light. The light was so clear and bright the trees cast shadows across the lawn. The cars, the grass, the rocky driveway were all clear in that otherwordly light.
I just looked. I could have–I am almost certain–sat down on the porch and read by the moonlight. Dark? It wasn’t dark–it was a second day. A day cool, clear, and quiet. A secret day that nobody saw, everyone sleeping away until the sun rose and chased this quiet silver day away.
I wish I had taken a picture. I didn’t. I don’t know if a photograph could have captured the silver light and the strange moon shadows cast by the trees. But if it did–if I had–then maybe you could have seen what the city dwellers miss.
The night holds a strange beauty for those who see it.
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