Nightwalkers
I put on a pair of light blue under-water shoes, wrapped a black cord around my neck jamming two little headphones into my ears. It was about 1:30 in the morning and from the darkness of laying flat on the living room floor I was out walking, my shoes crunching into the gravel cuts along the long black road leading through darkness. There were trees to the left and a great sloping field to the right. Down as far as I could see were orange street lights gleaming silently bulging shadows across the land.
“Show me something beautiful” is a request I make often to the sky when I head out to nowhere. But it didn’t feel like nowhere. It felt as soon as I was walking that I was making a pilgrimage to some long sought place of holy tranquility and peace
Not a few steps through the starless night my fear of darkness played against the back of my mind like the soft rub of a hand. I took that soft hand and lifted it away from my skull watching the warbling zombies running full sprint toward me vanish back into the depths of my less than stellar imagination.
Crunches of orange sand and rubble slipping under and jumping behind my shoes I noticed were following the beat of the music playing in my head as I passed along side the giant open field. I stared out blankly feeling adrenaline pumping through my veins.
I am a night walker, there are many of us in every city. My reason for loving it is the music, the environment and the solitude. The night brings different and indeed rare beauties the day cannot touch.
Several cars passed by but only a few, maybe three or four. A night scavenger like me out? Lock your doors and windows. I smiled at the vehicles like a fawn in the headlights sending them merry peace signs one by one.
I heard something. A rustling in the bushes. In a single moment I tore the headset off and tossed the wired mp3 player to the pavement. I stood silent listening carefully as the electronic device sputtered across the blacktop. Nothing. I picked up the device I had so quickly dropped, finding a large break in the glass covering the light display. Still worked…I’ll consider it a memento.
I had reached a cluster of orange street lamps beaming down their hazy lights onto the blacktop. Shadows danced into the woods. The taste of the air so warm, yet cold, happy but sad, and the electric humming buzz of one of the lamps as the mp3 player switched tracks.
Reaching the cusp of a slow slope down leading to an entirely unnecessary round about, I stopped dead in my tracks. I was about 40 yards off looking down on the round about lit by six different tall lamps, criss-crossed with high wires and the wood posts holding them. To the right in a grassy area displayed by the lamps, I spotted two white tails eating heartily from the cool late summer night grasses. Licked with the taste of early dew, they were beautiful.
It was a large elegant doe, fur colored a very dark brown. Eating a few feet from her was a small fawn. It looked almost white in the drowning street lights. I watched carefully. The mother looked up from its meal scanning the land around me. I clenched my teeth not moving a muscle, and the doe turned back down. I watched them in awe. Around here you see deer at certain times of year, but seeing and being able to actually watch them silently from the shadows, watching their elegant movements, their natural instincts, and their grace, is like throttling a leprechaun by the throat.
I repeated my attempts not to move several times watching the doe’s head lift up and stare down past me looking for some explanation to my light breathing. Nothing. I sat down slowly, in the grass on the side of the road at 2:00 in the morning.
I watched the two mysterious creatures meandering about the lit grasses, eventually drifting off to a line of short pines beyond the round about disappearing, but they were still watching me.
The walk back I let my eyes roll back into my head examining the events in near retrospection. The night walk back home is always retrospection. Thoughts…demonstrations of the incredible power of the human mind, as it shift from subject to subject, idea to memory, memory to experience. I imagined my blue aura lifting about my shoulders like misty wings, watching the land ahead, walking on the opposite side of the road under the outer branches of tall trees hanging over the road.
In the middle of the road was a giant buck standing in a pose demanding respect and dignity. Spotted brown, deep eyes, smooth fur rolling down its legs and along the spine of its back— about 25 feet off. He watched me, as I watched him. I tried to show him my intentions were peaceful. I was just another creature of the night looking for the shared understanding of existence. Like the elusive owl (or leprechaun) he gave me a look I wouldn’t soon forget. With his black eyes staring in contemplation, he vanished off into the woods ahead.
I nodded in thanks, smiled to the sky and finished my vocal night walk home.
Night walking is a liberating escape from the crowded nonsense of daylight— welcomed silence. All the worries, anxieties and troubles of the nine to five world drop away and you are left in solitude. This great solitude blossoms internal examination and deep thought. Spirit. A release valve for all the monotonous droning tasks performed in our daily lives. You walk at a steady pace, watch the night, the shadows of the trees, the black top, the empty roads and dark houses.. And you can just nearly touch that feeling like you’re the only person on Earth, alone as yourself and free to run down those deep thoughts there are no time for in the day. Shadows. Clarity. Solitude. Freedom.