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Nightcap

Nightcap

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I used to take these walks often. Nightcaps, I’d call them. Not the brisk, efficient stroll of early mornings but a saunter, an exhale. I took another last night, pulled outside by the dying light.

I strolled through pockets of warmth and coolness, bent down with outstretched palm to feel the heat still radiating from the pavement. Traces of the day as it fled.

Bats have been in short supply this summer but I saw two darting across patches of open sky. Trees seemed larger, hulking, like fairy tale specimens. Nature reasserting itself, nighttime claiming its own. I ambled through it, was filled by it.

Cool Air

Cool Air

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Last night I threw open the windows to let the cool air in. No fans required.

I love the whir of a fan on a hot summer night, but without the fan I could hear the insect noise, the crescendoing song of katydids, crickets and other creatures of the night.

The room cooled naturally, a simple transference, cool air instead of warm, night air instead of day.

Was that why I slept so well? Probably not. But it must have helped.

Night Light

Night Light

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Watching the light fade last night, I see leaves grow indistinct, dark masses without color. 

Searching for bats, I see blurred forms cut through the darkness, visible only when they cross a patch of still-blue sky.

As sunlight vanishes, fireflies rouse themselves from the ground, blink and twinkle as they flutter their way to the treetops.

Closer to where I’m sitting, the deck lights snap to attention. They’ve been storing sunlight all day and now release it.

Two types of night light on an early July evening. 

Night Reading

Night Reading

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Night reading is one of life’s great pleasures. Not just reading before bed, but reading in the wee hours, at times when I’d rather be sleeping.

I don’t grab a book first thing. I give deep breathing a chance to work, and sometimes it does. 

When it doesn’t, I grab whatever novel or nonfiction tome is on top of the pile and plunge into another world. It’s silent and dark, the only illumination supplied by my stalwart little book light. 

Thirty to sixty minutes of reading does the trick — unless I’m unusually frayed or the story is unusually suspenseful. 

Last night, neither of those was the case. I immersed myself in the Brazilian jungle until my eyelids felt heavy. When I woke up again, it was morning. 

Stars in the Darkness

Stars in the Darkness

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“To take a walk at night in a city that has settled into silence and a darkness that has become far too rare is to return to something precious, something lost for so long you’ve forgotten to miss it.”

— Margaret Renkl, Graceland, at Last

Thus does Renkl describe the days after tornadoes ripped through Nashville in March 2020, bringing the city, already Covid-bound, to its knees.

Or did it? It was a lovely, early spring that year, as it was here, gentle and rainy, and neighborliness was flourishing along with the flowers. People lingered outside because there was only darkness to go home to — and they could look up and see the stars.

But then the power company arrived, and life was back to normal. It was something to celebrate, but I picked up on a gentle melancholy in Renkl’s description. There is something to be said for stepping out of the routine, as long as you don’t step too far. Because once the lights came on … the stars went out.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Storm at Night

Storm at Night

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Thunder and lightning woke me up last night — that and the stagnant air that collected after a power loss. It was long-predicted — the remnants of Hurricane Ida heading this way — but no less frightening.

To see a storm brewing on the horizon, to watch as clouds darken and loom, is one thing. To be roused from sleep by a thunderclap is something else altogether. I wondered about the roof, the gutters, the tall trees that cluster around the house.  I felt at the mercy of the elements.  

I told myself that all would hold, the joists and metal and soil. I told myself to enjoy the spectacle of it all. But I couldn’t fall back to sleep until the torrents had slowed, until the heavens turned dark again. 

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Moonset

Moonset

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I woke early yesterday, as I do these days. Woke to a bright world, a full moon, and a persistent one. Even though the sky was lightening in the east, the moon was hanging on, slightly mottled with a haze of clouds, but still there.

It was strong enough to throw shadows on cars and houses — but soft enough to preserve the pre-dawn hush. It shined on a sleeping suburban world, utterly still, with frosted leaves that glittered in the grass.

In much of the world, moonlight matters. It’s the difference between seeing and stumbling. I thought about that as I walked west, into the moonset.

A Poor Trade?

A Poor Trade?

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By about 4 p.m. yesterday that extra hour of sleep Saturday night was beginning to seem like a pretty poor trade for the early darkness. The angle of light and the gathering shadows were disorienting, coming as they were a full hour earlier than I was braced to expect them.

In short, it’s “fall back” all over again, half of the crazy exercise in discombobulation we undergo twice a year. In this one we gain sleep and lose light — and in the springtime just the opposite, of course.

As an early riser, I technically shouldn’t mind this shift, because the light we lose in the evening we gain in the morning. But arriving home in darkness truncates the part of the day that belongs to us.  I always feel a bit robbed these first dark evenings.

I’ll get used to it eventually; I always do. And then it will become so much the norm that the bright evenings of early spring will seem an assault on the senses, leaving me blinking, as if someone flipped on the lights in the middle of the night.

Night Air

Night Air

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Last night the heat slaked off enough to open the windows, so that cool, fresh night air poured into the house. I fell asleep to the sound of a whirring fan.

It was like another place, the house with night air. Like a place that is part of the world it inhabits rather than separate from it.

The cicadas and crickets were singing their songs, and their music contributed to the feeling of aliveness in the house.

In the old days, we almost never used the air conditioning. But it comes in pretty handy these days, and I no longer roll my eyes at it. I accept the comfort it makes possible.

Still, the best sleeps are those without it, the ones when night air fills the house.

Lighting One Candle

Lighting One Candle

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It’s a strange sensation to lose electrical power in the middle of the night. Already dark and quiet, it might almost pass unnoticed. But I happened to wake at 4 a.m., perhaps missing the whir of the fan. When I glimpsed my darkened bedside clock, the silence suddenly made sense.

It was not just the deprivation of darkness, then, but a deeper lacking. Did I feel it somehow, drifting as we were without power through the night? I think so. My own small reading light seemed an insufficient candle to counter all that darkness. It gave me light enough to read by, though, and the evening was cool enough that I felt drowsy again before long.

Just as I began to drift off, a large truck chugged its way down the street. It was the power company. They were on it. I fell back to sleep lulled by the purr of the big truck’s engine.