Night Walker

“Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking.”

Antonio Machado

Being a dog owner . . . no, that doesn’t quite say it; let me make a new beginning. Having a dog as a friend is bound to catapult one into some new life experiences. So it was that this winter I took up a new hobby, thanks to my friend Bixby. I call it Night Walking. 

Night Walking is born of guilt. If one works a full day in town during the shorter days of fall and winter, the sun has set by the time one gets home. All well and good? Time to relax, get a nice fire going in the hearth, get cozy and rest? Wrong! There is no relaxing when a pair of dark brown eyes are following your every move, waiting. One hundred pounds of dog demands some exercise, rain or shine, light or dark. So it is that I learned the fine art of night walking.

To place a night walk in context, you must know that I live in the country, so far into the deep of the country that neither street light nor house light will ever guide my path or even glimmer in the distance. When Bixby and I step out the garage door and head down the drive, our only light is moonlight or starlight. 

Watch our styles as walkers and you will recognize a distinct difference.  As I begin my night walk I place each foot cautiously in front of the other, unsure just what sort of ground I’ll find underneath. Bixby, on the other hand, pulls to the full length of his flexi-lead, teetering at the edge of the cliff one moment and now barking up an oak tree in the next. His eyes are in his nose. He is privy to a world I know nothing of, and is quite in his element.

At first, coward that I am, I carried a flashlight. I soon discovered that it only succeeded in making me an alien, circling me in spotlight that was surrounded by noises and shadows and movements. I felt like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, visible to anything, a target. Switching the light off, I soon realized that I could pick up the slightly lighter color of the gravel in the road, and so steer a steady course. My steps were not confident, but I no longer feared teetering on the edge of the canyon. I could proceed, if not with Bixby’s authority.

Lacking Bixby’s olfactory advantages, I began to tap into other senses.  First it was simply the new experience of using my feet rather than my hands as a tactile receptor. I could recognize the changing road surface through the thick soles of my boots. Pavement. Decomposed granite. The ruts in the dirt of the driveway. The native grasses that bordered the road. I could almost navigate without eyesight with a bit of practice, finding the place in the center of the road which was most overgrown, least touched by the tires of the few cars who shared it.  So, I found that I could steer a course while throwing my head back to revel in the starlight. 

Don’t try this at home! Really! Walking with your head back on a dark night is a dizzying experience. It reminds me of scuba diving. I feel weightless.  One can easily sense the earth hurling around the sun when one immerses one’s self in starlight on a dark night. It is only the occasional sobering pull from Bixby on the other end of the lead that keeps me quite planted on the earth at all. 

One learns different lessons about the trees from this perspective, too.  Daily I admire our White Oaks and Coast Live Oaks, admire them for their shapes, their colors, their longevity. At night, those silhouettes come alive! Arms are reaching, grasping, twisting, strutting a stage and tearing a passion to tatters, raising their pleas and their miseries to the stars. Trees are powerful at night, and somehow much more ominous than during the day. 

But for the ultimate adventure, one must simply stand still. The evening is alive with sounds, strange rustlings in the bushes, occasionally a squeak or squawk from a victim of some night chase. Everything moves. Dinner is being sought or served behind every rock and tree. I have toyed with the idea of attaching an infrared camera to Bonny Doon’s back before she heads out on a nightly cat prowl. What would I see if I followed her on her adventures? Instead, I stand still, and Bixby only occasionally gives my hand a lick, a reminder that walking is much more fun than standing still, at least from his perspective. And who authors these night noises? Yes, I know that we provide a home for foxes, for coyotes, for deer, for bobcats, for turkeys, for raccoon and even for the occasional mountain lion. The question is who owns the noises? Is it a mouse that struggles in the bushes or the behemoth of my imaginings? So, I listen, feeling like an eavesdropper on someone’s dinner party. The uninvited.

When Bixby and I round the last curve in the road and the light of our own house appears far down the drive, I almost regret it, almost wish the road was longer. For a few minutes, or for the stretch of a mile, I have been a part of something bigger than myself. My world has gotten wider. I return to the warm fire and the comfy cushions with a new appreciation for the wild that is all but submerged in domesticity. And when my stomach growls, I smile. What wild animal sings its summons from the bushes?

Often removing ourselves from a safe and predictable environment will open doors to new and deeper perspective.  As a Night Walker, I felt like a guest in a foreign land, and suddenly became aware of a world that was invisible to me during daylight hours, although I’d named it my own backyard.   I relensed my world, and in doing so became party to a new level of wonder.

What familiar pattern or routine can you modify so that you can perceive your world differently, with fresh eyes? Which of your senses could you tap into in an old context, to help you “see” with other senses?