Who's Afraid of the Dark?

It is late August. I am lying in my yard on a blow-up mattress waiting for Friday to become Friday night, which is how I know people are wrong when they say, "It's as clear as the difference between night and day." That might be true at noon or midnight, but here at the liquid edge between day and night, the difference is so unclear that there are many words for it: sundown, twilight, nightfall, dusk. When I sit up for a better look, the mattress hisses like a rubber raft drifting on eventide. According to the rabbis, the Sabbath begins when three stars are visible in the sky, in which case I am not there yet. As it turns out, there is a lot of ground to cover between one sunset and three stars.

I am here to begin my study of darkness with the real thing, paying attention to it the way an artist or an astronomer might, instead of using it to gauge how much more I can get done before bed. Most nights sundown is useful only insofar as it tells me that the horses are stamping their feet at the pasture gate waiting to be fed. Once they and the three dogs have emptied their buckets and bowls, it is back to the kitchen to make supper, sort through the debris that collects on every flat surface during the upheavals of an ordinary day, start a load of laundry, and maybe watch an old episode of West Wing or Grey's Anatomy before settling down with a good book until the words run together and sleep puts the lights out.

Some nights the distractions are so plentiful that I do not even know what phase the moon is in, which was the whole point of moving to the country in the first place. When my husband Ed and I lived in the city, we almost never looked at the sky. When we were in the car, we looked at traffic. When we were on foot, we looked at the sidewalk while we talked about work, the weekend, and the kids. There was little reason to look up, since the night sky was almost always the same color. The reflective dome over the city took all the light that came its way, mixed it up, and painted the sky a metallic taupe that admitted few heavenly bodies. Even when the moon was full, it was hard to get a glimpse of it between the tall buildings that ringed the city in every direction.

One night, on our evening walk, we decided to haul anchor and move someplace where we could be on more intimate terms with the moon in all her seasons. If this does not sound important to you, I am not sure I can explain it. It had something to do with the growing awareness that our own seasons were numbered and we did not have forever to start paying attention to them. Plus, there is something promising in the cycles of the moon—now you see her, now you don't—for those who are more than halfway through what feels for all the world like a linear life with a period in view.

I took a cut in pay when I moved to the country, but the sky alone is worth it. Tonight, for instance, I am lying on a circle of flagstones still warm from the day's sun. The house is right behind me, at the top of a small hill. In front of me the view opens in every direction, with the hill falling away into darkness and the silhouette of a big bald-faced mountain dominating the horizon. There are no other dwellings visible in any direction, which means that there are no house lights, porch lights, security lights, or headlights to compete with whatever is about to show up in the sky.

The sky over my head has changed from blue to saffron to an inky plum color, which the thin gray clouds on the horizon are soaking up like cloths dropped on a spill. The air is not cool yet, but it is cooling fast. The light cotton sheet I have thrown over my legs is starting to feel damp. Dew is condensing on my upper lip. Above my head, a single bat is making loop de loops as it hones in on hapless insects and plucks them from the air. If the rabbis had said that the Sabbath begins when you see three bats in the sky, then I would be a third of the way there—but there are still no stars in the sky. I thought I saw one a minute ago, but when I blinked it was gone.

During the day it is hard to remember that all the stars in the sky are out there all the time, even when I am too blinded by the sun to see them. While I am driving to the post office to pick up my mail, a shooting star could be flying right over the hood of my car. While I am walking to the library to return an overdue book, Orion's Belt could be twinkling right above me. It is always night somewhere, giving people the darkness they need to see, feel, and think things that hide out during the day.

Since literal darkness is both the trigger and the metaphor for almost all the other kinds, this seems like the place to start. There is so much folklore about darkness, so much baggage packed by people whose hopes and fears are far different from mine, that it seems important to pay attention to the arrival of it for once, letting curiosity take the place of evasion. Even if it is just for one night, what can I learn about darkness by lying in wait for it like this?

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, every day ends with three different twilights. Civil twilight begins a little before dark, when you first notice that it is time to use the headlights on your car. For some, this realization does not come until the last three approaching cars have blinked their headlights at you. Mild confusion ensues—did you leave your pocketbook on top of the car again? —until the brain puts dark and dark together and turns the headlights on.

Civil twilight is over by the time I take up my post in the yard. The moon is at half-mast, lying low over the darkening horizon. It will be full tonight—what the first people who lived here called a Grain Moon since the hay in the field is ripening for the second time this summer. The sky still has enough light in it that every now and then I see something that looks like a miniature biplane flying past—either a dragonfly or a pair of insects into adventurous sex. The bat has apparently called it a night.

Nautical twilight comes next, when the brightest stars are visible enough to steer by. That means Venus will be a front-runner, showing up low over the western horizon while the cicadas kick up their chorus of thrumming in the woods. There are fewer crickets tonight, but they send their messages too, along with a pair of night birds trying to find each other in the dark. When the compressor for the air conditioning in the house turns on, I feel apologetic. I had no idea how loud it was out here, clearly interrupting a whole valley full of creatures that are trying to say something to one another.

Above all our heads, the arrival of nautical twilight is not looking good. The thin gray blanket of clouds has grown, covering the moon along with the rest of the sky. What do people do, on nights like this, in countries where the start of a festival or a month of fasting depends on a clear view of the moon? Every now and then it shows through the clouds that are moving across its face. One moment it looks like the eye of a hawk in profile. The next it looks like the eye at the top of the pyramid on a dollar bill. Why does it never look simply like the moon behind clouds? I do not know. All I know is that I never tire of pulling the moon to earth by likening it to something I know down here.

When the thickening clouds leave no doubt that nautical twilight will not be happening tonight—much less astronomical twilight, which begins when even the faintest stars are visible—I think that I should go inside, but I do not go inside. The sky changes every couple of seconds. The breeze is slight but delectable. The sounds come from all directions at once. If I put out my hand to touch the flagstones beneath my raft, I can still feel the heat of the day in them, as if the earth were a sleeping animal giving off warmth.

To go inside would be like putting down a glass of cool spring water to go drink a store-brand cola. It would be like blowing out a pearl-colored candle to go read by a compact fluorescent light. Why would someone do that? The only reason I can think of is because she does not know what to do with so much night, especially since nothing she can do in it counts as productive, useful, or even moderately aerobic.

This struggle goes on for about twenty more minutes before productivity wins out. Rolling off my raft, I stand and fold the cotton sheet, dragging the mattress up to the porch behind me. Then I say good night to the moon and go inside the house to deal with the detritus of my day.

Later, lying in my bed, I feel cut off from everything that is going on outside my windows. I feel too loose, like a baby who has been unwound from her swaddling clothes and does not know what to do with her limbs. Outside, the gentle weight of the night had put me in my place and held me there, so that I could not ignore the spectacle of an ordinary summer evening. On a night like this, it is hard to understand why anyone would choose a reading lamp and the hum of the air conditioner over a box seat at the sound-and-light show outside, where it is always opening night.

Excerpted from Learning to Walk in the Dark. by Barbara Brown Taylor.