Maybe it was the warmth of the house...or perhaps the coming full moon that drew me out into the night air. I had spent most of the day cooking real food for most of the week, save a trip to the library with the boys. When 9:30 rolled around everyone had bedded down somewhere in the house but I found myself restless with a need to move.
I get this way sometimes. Always when change is coming. And I have learned with a certainty to give in to it...to let it be...to let it take me. I needed to walk and the cloak of darkness provided an anonymity that was far too enticing to pass up. I grabbed a hooded sweatshirt and ventured out.
Maybe it's because we are animals inside but night has always offered me a certain heightened self awareness. My breathing is different, my eyes scan everything, and my mind is allowed to play and explore it's deepest recesses.
The pavement was wet and chilled with a soft mist and intermittent sprinkle of a suspended like drizzle. The streetlights cast somewhat ghastly shadows along the path I chose. When you leave my street and walk down toward the quarry, you follow the underground route of the water and in tandem seek the lowest point. As you collect your thoughts, the water collects underground (some say 100 feet in these parts) and both empty into a pool of contemplation. There is an unabashed collective spirited dance you succumb to with the water, and with yourself.
I thought of the past. I thought of today. I thought of how I want my life to be. And I walked on. One foot in front of the other into the darkness, with it's breaks of unnatural light - proving the weather. I shed a tear. I felt my heart beat. I felt hope and let it devour me. I was content as well as restless. We humans are meant to move, meant to think, to believe, and to dream.
For a long moment everything was alright. My family was fed, they were warm, they were safe, and I was out drunk with the darkness of night weighing my future and unloading the past. I paused at the entrance to the quarry, a natural jutting of lime stone on either side of the road. The rocks are laced with a type of metal that has long since rusted from its exposure. In the morning when the sun hits them the shadows will heal back into themselves and take my thoughts with them. We are so finite and yet so eternal. We are such recycled energy - and can choose to be a force for good, for hope.
When I rounded the bend and saw my door I left the rainy night to it's own, with the faith that it would be there again waiting for me. I entered my dwelling a bit better than when I had left, and was ready for a sleep of dreams.
"Let the night teach us what we are,
and the day what we should be."
-Thomas Tryon, 1691
-To the mist, until we meet again
