Stumbling into the Darkness

            The fading light of dusk is disappearing into the oncoming night, which promises to be cool and crisp. Fall has surely reached the Eastern Shore, and the scent of burning wood lingers for a moment in the air and then dissipates. Carried away by this brief visitation, my mind drifts back to those chilling nights when my grandfather would send me out to retrieve a log or two for the dying fire. I’d hurry into the darkness without coat or shoes and sprint to the wood pile, my bare feet painfully striking the cold hard ground along the way. Through the leaves and scattered bits of chopped wood, I’d shuffle around in the shadowy mass to find the largest logs to revive the fire.

            My memories ebb away, and here and now, a sliver of moon appears just as the retiring sun pulls the remaining strands of light deeper into the west.  Once a pale ghost in a blue sky, the moon now catches the sun’s light and becomes illuminated against the growing darkness. Still this thin waxing crescent does not offer much light to the dimming landscape, now growing increasingly mysterious and unfamiliar to my eyes. Perhaps, I muse, I have chosen the wrong night to walk in the dark. Surely with this sparse light to guide me, my feet will falter and quickly stumble over an unnoticed branch or stone. But this is to be expected. I am a creature of daylight and unlike nocturnal beings; I am most at home in the light.  Still, the night beckons to me, and I open the door of my grandparent’s house to see what will come of this dark invitation.

            The first sight that greets me is a porch light with a swarm of insects, fellow lovers of the light, dancing around its glowing bulb. Among them are four or five Common Idia moths, Idia aemula with their wings fluttering frantically. In blurs of light, their grey bodies brush repeatedly against the glass surface of the bulb, the contact leaving a faint clicking sound in its wake. Countless gnats also smack into the glass and leap back to do so yet again and again, orchestrating their own syncopated beat to the rhythm of insects hitting against the porch light. Two large crane flies, Tipula borealis circle around the light at a further distance, seemingly to avoid the commotion of the moths. I think, “Something must instinctively pull these creatures toward this hazy glow protruding into the darkness.”

 Porch lights, scientific research has noted, create an artificial form of illumination know as ambient illumination, which attracts insects even as it distorts their ability to navigate through the night. These creatures twirling around the incandescent bulb before me, are likely to be very confused and disoriented (Longcore and Rich 2004: 193); (Foster and Roenneberg 2008:79).  Many organisms rely on light to navigate throughout the day and are caught off guard when artificial light is introduced to their environment. Ambient illumination has shown to either attract or repel a variety of species.  Further, bright light can temporarily blind certain species. Yet other organisms can adapt to ambient illumination and use it to their advantage by foraging for food in its artificial day. Studies have shown that lunar rhythms influence the behavior of many animals and insects such as migration, cycles of birth and the ways in which members of a species communicate with one another. Since the moon is the brightest object in the night sky, it is not surprising that organisms might mistake artificial light for the full moon and adjust their internal clockwork to sync with a false lunar cycle.

            Nearby the light bulb, an enormous black and yellow garden spider, Argiope aurantia sits at the top of her web. I know she’s a female because of her size. She like many other spider kinds has chosen an opportune location in which make herself at home and weave a silken web.  And once constructed, she remains true to it, persistently repairing threads broken by the force of weather or moving objects. For this female garden spider, the center of the universe is tucked into the highest corner of the screened porch, where she is harvesting diligently an artificial swarm of creatures drawn to an artificial light. There is beauty in the interdependence between species, as the life of one being delivers sustenance and prolongs life for others. But this cycle, whether it be under natural or unnatural conditions, is dependent on death as one creature relies on the life of another to survive, for “each species, including ourselves, is a link in many chains” (Leopold 1949).  She waits patiently for one of the critters to stumble into her large round web and become an evening meal, thus continuing the cycle.

            I search through my bag to find a headlamp and pause as I hear the hoot of an owl. Perhaps this is the call of a Great Horned Owl, Bubo virginianus marking his or her territory in the woods. Arrayed with a light, I am ready to set out on the path running between the soybean fields and the edge of the woods with Jack, my little lemony beagle following close behind me. My headlamp lights the way as we walk through the open, dark field and past the black still water of the pond. Something stirs in the tall grass and jumps into the water, breaking the silence. Jack snorts and gruffs angrily at any unexpected sound that leaps from the darkness. As we approach the edge of the woods, our footsteps are no longer muffled by the grass. We move noisily over the crunching leaves that have blown into the soybean field.

            Soon the pine needles buffer the sound of the breaking leaves beneath our feet as we creep up to the dead Black Oak, Quercus velutina. I peer into the woods and struggle to step forward into the darkness. I know what I will find if I venture deep enough into the shadows of tall trees. I am only a few steps away from the thin crooked path that leads to a clearing in the heart of the woods. I have only been there once before, as a child led by my grandfather. I was never allowed to play too close to the woods as my grandparents feared a hunter’s bullet would accidentally find me. Stepping inside was always forbidden; until one year my grandfather rented out the property so that hunters would not be permitted, and we could explore it in safety. This forest was always mysterious to me and held a subtle uninviting aura, perhaps because I had convinced myself it was too dangerous. As Thoreau has put it, “there is something in the…air that feeds the spirit and inspires.”  Or in my case, deters. For these trees and shadows have always inspired wonder as well as fear in me (1862).

As I remember it, my grandfather and I walked down the path together, he whistling and I searching for the perfect walking stick. We passed tangles of American holly Ilex opaca, tall Sweet Gum Liquidambar styraciflua, Sassafras Sassafras albidum, Loblolly Pine Pinus taeda, and Mulberry Morus rubra.. After some time we reached a clearing in the woods. In the center of the openness there stood a wide sycamore tree, Platanus occidentalis. The tree was thick and tall, with branches stretching outward and low enough that someone might be able to jump up and grab hold of one. As we drew closer to the tree and noticed the mass of scribbles carved into the white speckled bark, I became uneasy. Before me were hundreds of words linked together from base to branch taken from different psalms of the Christian bible. I cannot remember which psalms and verse numbers were carved into the tree, but I remember reading the words “Jesus lives” and “blood of Christ” in bold wounds on the sycamore’s body. As I wonder yet again who did this and why, I am swept back to my eleven year old self, reminded of the mysteries that once haunted me as I walked through this woods. Was this act carried out by a group, or individual? I now wonder if they came to this place to take spiritual refuge among the trees, or had other intentions. My imagination wanders and spurs visions of people gathering in secret at the old sycamore tree, under the cover of shadows. I remember my grandfather teasing me that people once hung witches from the tree, although the meaning behind this artifact hidden in the rural outskirts of Eden, Maryland was as much of a mystery to him as it was to me. Still, I am cautious and worry about what, or rather who I may meet lingering in the darkness. 

            Jack has no qualms about entering the unknown and pulls me forward, tugging at the leash. I wonder if his confidence stems from ignorance. I am unaware of what I may find in the woods and feel I am kept in the dark in more ways than one. He must see or hear something stirring that my eyes and ears cannot pick up. The sound pulls at his curiosity and draws him inward. I marvel at my fear and his indifference, even eagerness. There is life beyond what I can see, hidden within brush and tucked inside burrows and hollow trees. I stand still and listen for any sign of movement. The heat of my breath appears and then disperses in the light of the lamp. I become uneasy and turn longingly toward the comforting glow of candles sitting in the windowsills of the house just a field away. A few moments pass and I give in to fear. Yearning for familiarity, for ease, for the world of light, I make my way back to the house. I wonder what it is that instinctively tells me to retreat but allow other animals to go forward without hesitation.

            Why am I so unsettled by land blanketed in night? After all, the night sky is the stage that holds the beauty of the heavens in the brilliance of many tiny stars. I need only look up to take in the splendor of the cosmos and lose my fear in the “perpetual presence of the sublime” (Emerson 1836). I stretch my neck back as far as it will reach, and tilt my gaze toward the sky.  For a moment my attention shifts to nothing but the gentle elegance of sparkling particles above me. Leaves crunch ahead of me, breaking my trance and I fall back into uneasiness before the dark forest, internally debating whether or not to enter. My reluctance feels primal, perhaps inherited from ancestors of long ago. Is my innate disconnect with the dark deep rooted? I am weary of the unknown and what sees me that I cannot see in turn; perhaps my caution is natural and my ache for light traces back to when early humans first commanded fire and brought vision to the night. This land familiar to me only an hour ago has now been transformed into jagged silhouettes and uninviting shadows. My sense of place is distorted. I have been uprooted from the field I walked with ease in the dusk. Like the moths lingering in the glowing aura of an incandescent bulb in the night, I too am pulled toward the light.

URL: http://naturalhistoryatsu.blogspot.com/2014/12/stumbling-into-darkness_3.html

References Cited

Emerson, R. W. (1836). Selections from Nature.

Foster, R. G. and Roenneberg, T.

2008 Human Responses to the Geophysical Daily, Review Annual and Lunar Cycles.Current Biology 18: 784–794.

Leopold, Aldo. (1949). A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Print.

Longcore, T. and Rich, C.

2004 Ecological Light Pollution. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2: 191-198

Thoreau, H. D. (1862). Walking.