Hiking By Night?

Last night I was restless and wanted to go hiking.  I didn't terribly care that it was 8 PM and already the evening blanket was beginning to settle.  Aaron, says I, put on your shoes.  If we don't go now,  I'm just going to go to bed.  When I go to bed at 8 PM, I am awake by 4.  There's just no arguing with my body - 7 hours of sleep is my preferred and I just can't sleep any longer no matter how hard I try.  Not being a fan of waking up with me at 4 AM, Aaron put on his shoes and we set out in our neighborhood.

I'm not certain I've spoken much about my neighborhood.  It's a big, friendly place full of families and dogs and well-manicured lawns.  Townhouses are set like teeth into the lanscape that surrounds the pipeline that runs through Northern Virginia.  The pipeline has nothing built over it anywhere, and the trees are cleared from it.  It is simply a giant swath of prairie grass framed by trees and houses, over which airplanes fly.

Think of airplanes as white noise.  When the comings and goings are constant, it's like the ebb and the pull of the ocean.  The sound becomes comforting and settled - they are not so close as to be a disturbance but more as to be a friend. So with this white noise and the settling night, we set out. 

At first it was wonderful.  We passed one jogger and three dogs being walked.  It was very quiet, for our neighborhood.  It felt luxurious and a bit irresponsible - as though we, too, should be settling. 

We decided to take a long loop that should take approximately one hour.  Nevermind that this loop goes through forest at night!  It'll be fine!

As the sun sunk lower and lower, I eyed the gaping black forest we were about to go into.  Any of you who live in urban areas know there is no real darkness here, but somehow in contrast to the safely lit streets, those paths seem darker than an alley in a ghost town. 

I'm afraid of the dark.  It's okay.  I said it.  I'm fine with this weakness, really.  The tiny town I come from in Northern Wisconsin experiences darkness, true darkness.  The stars are alive there - the milky way and the aurora borealis are visible at times, and the moons light is enough to see deer and bear dart and lumber through the yard, respectively.  Here there are few stars, and fewer lumbering things.

But the darkness scares me.  I was reading about two hikers, women, who were murdered on the Appalachian Trail in 1996, and I was none too sure that there weren't things that go more than bump in the night.  There have been eleven murders on the trail since 1974.  I'm none too keen to become the twelfth. 

Aaron said all was fine, and he took my hand and we walked down into the dark trees.  We came to a stream crossing.  Under the bridge, a bubbling blackness was seeping through the cracked boards.  Gollums lurk in the darkness, gollums and conniving snake dens and unknown things with fangs and fingers and fur.

And so our leisurely walk turned into a jog, and a flat out run.   I was overcome by my imagination, I fear, and had I been able to fly, I would have flown over the bridge.  Hearken back to when you were six, and things could reach out from under your bed and grab your ankles and pull you under, forever and ever.  But your blankets protected you!

Well hell.  My blanket was nowhere nearby.

Aaron, the fine husband he is, chased after me so as not to leave me alone.  After racing down the path faster than I thought my legs could carry me, we came to terrain that was bordering houses.  These houses had their lights on,  behind drawn shades, and the ambient light was enough for me to feel invincible once again.  So we meandered over another stream.... okay.  I say meandered.  He meandered.  I took a running leap over it.  Same difference.

And then we came to the clear swath again.  Only now the darkness was more firmly entrenched.  There was a bare fringe of fuschia around the horizon, fading up to rose and then blending with tones of green grey and smoky darkness until the sky above was a deep shade of slate that bordered on navy blue.  Polaris was visible, and the crescent moon could clearly be seen to be nestling the rest of the moon, in deep relief, in its palm.

And the airplanes.  Oh, the airplanes.  I was stunned by the beauty of these moving stars, not shooting starts but crawling.  I could see so many all at once, following their varied paths across the sky.  One looked to be going straight up, until the light grew bigger and it passed overhead, the twinkling on the wings visible it was so close.  Others seemed to be falling into the houses on the horizon, getting caught in the blackened leafy branches of trees.  Some arced through the sky, west-bound.  One by one, more stars appeared in the sky and the rosy shades disappeared from the horizon entirely.

As we stood there in dumb silence watching for what felt like an hour, I realized that hiking by night might not be for me.  But pausing to focus, really feeling that internal stillness, contrasted with the cross-country movement of so many in the skies above? 

Yep.  That's for me.

(No photos.  They would look like a big blotch of blueblack.)