Put yourself here.
The moon shines just shy of full. If you could mentally warp the left upper side just a bit, you could fill the full sphere with the Gestalt
.
The air is so still and quiet you can hear your own inner ears. You listen so attentively that you are not sure you are not catching the faded universal radio signals remaining from the 20 billion years past the Big Bang.
You are at Thunder Creek.
You’ve come down County Road F and passed the last house with lights three miles ago. You have turned on Thunder Creek Road; the two-track leading into the wooden bar across it that serves as a gate into Thunder Creek Farm. You slip under the gate to walk the final hundred yards between the close rows of pine up to the homestead.
The homestead sits with such a combination of humility and pride that you wonder at your sense of sanity. Is the homestead so anthropomorphic? Its personality is shy—no pillars or fancy window treatments. The logs chinked with mud are slick enough to reflect the glowing moonlight. Horizontal stripes of light wrap themselves up to the second story, the often dreamed of loft.
At loft level, logs stand soldierly straight, bearing the weight of the roof with impervious stares. The open space yields light from one small window at each end of the gambrel roof. A winding brick path leads up to the heavy door made of the same logs as the cabin itself.
You almost move. Your hand is ready and outstretched to unlock the door. But that silence intrudes once more. It overwhelms your senses, trying so hard to hone in on the nothingness. The lack of stimuli is so stimulating that internal red alert has been declared.
What do you expect?
You know deer come to drink at the small pond. Tracks surround the entire perimeter, fresh daily. You have heard stories of bear and seen both droppings and tracks, right up through the berry bushes on the hill flanking the homestead. You’re seen the hole that’s been identified as that of a wolverine in front of that locked door. The lock is only a knotted chain slipped through the empty space where a knob once could have closed the cabin.
You have hiked the forty acres at this Thunder Creek Farm many times over the years. You have seen this remote acreage in every season and know the huge gaps under fallen trees in the tamarack swamp past the pond.
A bat flits noiselessly in front of your face. You jump back. But a tiny inch-of-a-jump. What might be behind you? And what was that dark feathering on your skin? Not fear? Your kinship with Cro-Magnon man shivers as your body reverts to primitive instincts.
It has entered the Flight or Fight readiness state.
Where are the sounds of cars?
The screeches of children?
The hum and buzz that man continually surrounds himself with?
None.
None at all.
If you sit directly on the grass next to the kitchen garden, you can glimpse a cramped slice of the moon through the high pines. The spot of light picks out a batch of wild white flower.
Zap!
In front of your face!
That was Not a bat.
It buzzed like a giant bee or a miniature helicopter.
You involuntarily jerk backward. More jerks inside your body than out.
Silence almost returns. The oo-hoo of an owl peacefully widens your awareness. It relaxes your tense fingers and legs. You look about now, with less stress or fear of the unknown. For now there is a single item of the known. The owl calls out again.
Then you see it.
Down by the masses of white flowers, a small bird flits among them. Momentarily, the moon has caught the eye of the hummingbird and you are cleared of your immense fear. Though you had never known a hummingbird to venture out after dusk. The entire frame of your body relaxes from its hyper-alert state and you begin to feel the beauty of the night
.
For it is beautiful.
Moon glows so softly out in the meadow beyond the pines that no visual image appears to be real. Ninety percent is your imagination filling in the blanks. You walk out toward the meadow and can feel yourself absorb that moonlight.
It touches you as it touches everything else.
Even knowing it is real, you still wonder if it isn’t ninety percent your own imagination
.
Or a dream? A nightmare turned into a dream?
The horned owl hoots once more. Further away.
Much further.
Thank you, Jill, for a lovely walk in the night-woods, with all its smells, images, sounds, textures. I have. never heard of a humming bird flying at night. Amazing.