Outside a little town in central Pennsylvania, just off a highway, a single streetlamp shone where there was no street, no habitation, no sign of human life. It stood entirely on its own in the dark, leaning just a bit above the round pool of light it created.
I stopped my car; I was immediately drawn to it, walked over, and stepped into that white circle. Within its perimeter, I stared out at the surrounding night. At first my thoughts were on the anomaly of its being there- was it an abandoned gas station, or a railroad crossing?- but soon I just gave into its shelter, its pallid radiance, and felt a strange comfort staring out at the complete darkness around me. I stayed a while and then moved on.
I remember that odd streetlight and that experience of 60 years ago, as I drive through the outer Cape in the wee hours of the morn- as they say- perhaps 1 or 2 AM. My headlights slice a beam of light through an otherwise dark world, with the exception of an occasional reflector on a guard rail or a distant lighted window of a house in the woods. This thin strip of light and the immensity of the darkness makes me feel…puny.
Perhaps I am feeling this way because of the time of year: darkness rules.Night still dominates and reigns over day, even as daylight is meekly, incrementally, increasing. Sunrise to sunset comprises a big hunk of the clock.
Of course the majority of us miss the full impact of this dominance because we sleep right through most of the darkest hours. But it is hard to deny that it is a dark time of year.
We humans are so dependent on the light of day, so fearful for its lack, that our entire lives are dictated by this relationship. Since our beginnings as a species, we have climbed up to safety in trees, hidden in caves, or huddled by the firelight, waiting fearfully for the dawn. Darkness meant danger. Eclipses used to drive people crazy, and still do.
Perhaps we need to think more about the dark.
As we are comfortable in the day, many animals feel the same way about the night, and have developed senses attuned to it. It is the time for owls and coyotes, foxes and raccoons; rats. In the summer whippoorwills- where they still exist- sing in the darkened brush, and many moths and other insects flutter through the air.
To the night roamers, darkness seems roomier. There is less competition from the daytime animals, and- most important- people are largely absent. Night creatures stroll across our mostly deserted highways and streets, across our lawns and patios, without much consideration of us. Our things are just part of their world.
On the last big full moon, friends of mine ventured out into the dunes. They described an enchanted landscape bathed in silver light- a magical experience. Another friend swims at night, even in winter, and brought back reports of shooting stars and bioluminescence in the water.
But notice that the emphasis is still on the light- even though it is darkness that enhances it. The rich velvety black between those stars makes them brighter. They’re up there all day, you know, but are lost to us.
And so we cling to the light and navigate with hesitation in the dark. But it is always there.Even our shadows tell us that daylight has its limits. Our world is always there, even in the dark, even when it is unseeable. It is nothing to fear.
