What is your relationship with the dark?
Cozy or scary?
Nourishing or terrifying?
I love the dark. The stillness, the peace, the mystery. I feel comforted by darkness. One of my favorite things is to walk with no flashlight at night up on the land. It feels like an intimate conversation with all my senses and the stars, earth, and sky.
I’d love to hear your experiences, both brilliant and bothersome, with the dark.
It is now TWO MONTHS until the launch of my new book, Wild, Willing, and Wise!
Yeeeessss! Check out my epic two-month, 25-city tour at wildwillingwise.com
This Month’s Poem
My mama, Maggie, started sending daily emails to her friends when the pandemic started. She is still at it, and I look forward each day to seeing what image, poem, or cartoon she is going to share.
Here is a poem she shared last week.
SLEEPING IN THE FOREST
I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
~ Mary Oliver
Artwork by Olivia Walker
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1284489890/print-of-my-original-picture-abstract
I have always loved night, and felt safe in it. I love looking up to see the Milky Way and the stars, and thue scents of flowers on a night breeze. In the city I need to be more cautious, but the desire to see the stars and simply be outdoors when 90% of the people around are asleep (thus not thinking so loudly) is still there. I love the sound of an owl in my neighborhood's tall trees, and a fox walking under my window. This is darkness, a different but welcoming place.
I've always been a night owl. I like to sit with the stillness that the dark brings, and yet so much is going on, from the spider making her web to the owl singing her song to the night sky. I sit, I paint, I cuddle a blanket and be. Watching all that passes. As the night ends and daylight starts to break, the stillness changes its rhythm. The flowers begin to open their buds; the dogs begin to stretch and play—such a beautiful rhythm. 💕