I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around in the dark lately. Literally, not figuratively. Dusk is when the Screech-owl family shows up in the yard, and if there are any lights on in the house, it’s difficult to see them.
Have you ever noticed how many lights there really ARE in a modern home? When you are trying to keep them off, you will.
I’ve always thought that one of the ways to really know you are at home in a place is to walk around it at night, in the dark. If you feel at home then, you are.
I can turn off all the regular lights in my house and walk around at night with no problem, mostly because the little LEDs from the electronics are enough to guide me! Clocks, oven, coffee maker, dishwasher, cordless phones, DVD players, and chargers are all laying around being helpfully bright. Not to mention the actual night-lights that are there for that purpose. Computer equipment adds to the mix: laptop adapters, hard drives and printers (even mice sometimes) have little lights to make sure you know they’re awake even when the computer is supposed to be asleep.
Moonlit nights are awesome, casting shadows in the yard and on the porch, and walking around the house at night is even easier. Sometimes I stand outside and listen to the night sounds, knowing that most everyone else in the neighborhood is asleep. My weird schedule has its advantages.
Read about Thoreau’s moonlit walks:
The light is more proportionate to our knowledge than that of day. It is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind’s habitual atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminated moments are.
~Henry David Thoreau, “Night and Moonlight” (1863)
© Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves