My Night

We are wired for enchantment.

For they (the beautiful encounters) are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not seen, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.
C. S. Lewis, sermon, Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, June 8, 1941

I awoke early yesterday and found the stars peering in my windows and a nearly full moon casting its icy silver light over our farm. A cold front had dropped down from Canada, crystallizing the night; my world had become deep and dark blue and cloudless. I stood outside shivering under this for about a minute before going back in to build a fire in our stove. Cedar was popping and the coffeemaker chattering a few minutes later. It was about 4AM. I checked the moon again and planned my morning.

By five I was warmly dressed, driving slowly south on the deserted highway. About six miles south of our place our state highway joins U.S. 95. If you take that north for about a mile, driving up the long hill, there is a scenic overlook. I pulled off, shut down the car and the lights and stood there, looking out over the dark valley and the Selkirk range rising up on the far side, the yellow moon lingering above the snow on a mountainous horizon.

The slope before me was forests and rock outcrops and small farms cut into the terrain; the valley floor further below was mostly open farmland spread between the loops of a slow and mature river. All these parts slept beneath a faint illumination of silver light. Overhead Orion had begun his westward descent, and the Pleiades, further west, were washed in the moon's glow. Behind me in the darkness some large game animals clattered over the rock. The wind gently moved down the mountain slope, dense and cold, carrying the scent of soil and conifers and recent rain - like the pheromones of a strong and beautiful and dangerous creature, claiming one's attention irresistibly and unforgettably. Listening to the stillness I could hear the energy of the air moving over the needles of thousands of acres of pines and firs - a low-pitched, sensuous hum, an easy flow, a mountain's breath, falling onto the valley below.

The photography was not going well for a couple of reasons. I didn't press it. Maybe it seemed that a kind of shyness was appropriate, as if the night was asking for a little privacy with that kind of intimacy. Perhaps what I had seen and smelled and listened to was not something to photograph and pass around. For the hour or so I was out on the highways and watching from the overlook not a single vehicle passed. Except for my own noise there was not another man-made sound.

Driving home I watched the fog condensing over farmer's fields. It caught the last ivory light of the moon as it slipped behind the mountains. A hint of dawn was beginning behind me. Venus rose over the eastern mountain line. I would have the stars for a while longer. The cold, dense atmosphere of the night moved around me, on its way to the valley floor.