Into The Dark
Step by step, we move forward through the darkness, our headlamps setting small pieces of the night alight, as the trail behind us fades back into the shadows.
Most people pay little attention to their surroundings, and those things we don’t see, sometimes hiding in the periphery, other times standing in plain sight, create holes in our perception of the world. Recently, I realized some of life’s most rewarding experiences can be found in these blind spots, and they’re ours to embrace if we’re willing to pay attention.
While every moment is arguably precious, we all understand the weight of meaningful experiences, those select memories we’ll carry forward through the years. A change in my running schedule set me down in uncharted territory where I discovered a source of meaningful moments that was previously hidden under the cover of night.
It took a while to get used to running in the dark. But when serious training goals pushed up against busy work schedules and the intense heat of the North Carolina summer, running in the dark not only made sense; it was our only viable option.
My wife and I run with Petzl headlamps. They’re bright, rechargeable, and so lightweight that you forget you’re wearing them during runs. There are a few downsides to running with a headlamp. You can only see fragments of the world as you move through it at speed, and most of your vision remains obscured by the dark, which always feels a little unsettling.
Sometimes, the bouncing light creates a strange illusion. The bill of my running cap casts a dark shadow that extends from the bottom of my eyes to the ground, making it feel like I’m wearing a mask blocking the view of the road beneath my feet, resulting in an unconscious uncertainty about whether my next step will hit solid ground. But running with a light offers advantages that outshine its shadows.
Headlamps offer an opportunity to run higher mileage during the coolest parts of the day, allowing us to escape the searing sun and severe humidity. The light also provides a measure of safety, lighting the road before me while alerting approaching vehicles to my presence.
But the best part about running before the sun comes up has nothing to do with running at all. Being outside during the dark hours has exposed a side of nature that was previously unknown to me. The many mornings of traversing through the forests and farmlands have created special memories I’ll always carry with me.
When I was young, I seldom saw the rising sun. Like most teenagers, the sun was casting small shadows by the time I was up and ready to go outside. Later in life, I developed an affinity for watching sunrises and sunsets.
But these days, it’s my love of running that has me up early. Each morning, I wake up, brush my teeth, use the restroom, change clothes, and I’m out the door, returning from long runs well before sunrise. It’s a rewarding way of taking care of my well-being before giving my time and energy to anyone or anything else.
As soon as we step off the front porch, our headlamps shine out into the pasture where dozens of glowing eyes reflect back at us. This herd of whitetail deer has been bedding down here for the past few months. We run down a dirt road past them, and on most days, they’re still in the same place when we return.
Apart from deer, we’ve come across the bright eyes of raccoons, opossums, minks, foxes, and cats, but we’re most interested in avoiding coyotes. One only needs to hear a passing fire truck siren to be mesmerized, and horrified, by the sheer quantity of hidden coyotes howling back from all directions.
As we make our way down the dirt road, silk threads glow in our headlamps, exposing spider webs in the bordering trees. There are always two spiders with webs splayed out along this path. They’re big and grotesque, looking like small, menacing crabs. As we pass by, we do our best to avoid their webs to prevent any mishaps that would induce bloodcurdling screams. The human body has comical, instinctive reactions to walking face-first into a spider web, but it’s only funny when it’s not you.
Along the main road a few miles away, we run past an old pine grove. Its lowest branches hang over the road about twenty feet in the air. There, our lamps illuminate the long, single strands of silk made by inchworms rappelling to the ground. Because you can’t see them until they’re about two feet away, you’re forced to slalom left and right to get past. It’s always worth a few laughs, and grunts, as we rush by, working to maneuver our bodies with split-second directional changes.
Along the trails, you can see another amazing show. A headlamp projects light from just above your eyes which redirects reflections back to your line of sight. This allows you to see something you can’t view with a handheld flashlight. In the woods and grasses all around, hundreds of light green sparkles, the color of old coke bottles, glisten like diamonds. These are the shining eyes of wolf spiders, and they’re so bright, you can easily spot a small spider from fifty feet away. They are everywhere.
The best experiences, however, come from sources of reflected light much larger than tiny spiders. I’m always astounded by the brightness of a full moon, especially in rural areas where there’s minimal light pollution. On a dark morning, the moon is bright enough to cast shadows, faint but present. And a full moon on the horizon looks twenty times bigger, as if it were hurtling through space toward the Earth, about to crash into us. And when a full moon is high above and the conditions are right, small ice crystals in the atmosphere reflect light back toward the moon, creating a large halo that sometimes has faint colors. It’s a beautiful sight to see.
Another amazing thing to witness is the setting of the moon. The Earth’s rotation away from the moon’s position creates this illusion, giving the appearance that the moon is setting beneath our planet’s horizon, just like a sunset. And when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, and the moon drops below the horizon, you can be sure to notice. On one moonset, the entire area dropped into such blackness that I stopped and turned off my headlamp just to stand in that void for a moment. It was like being transported to another realm, or floating through space.
On another run, the bright part of the moon was only a thin sliver, while the rest of the moon looked like a round gray shadow against the black sky. The entire scene was set over a large rustic barn in the middle of a tobacco field. Below the moon was a single bright light, which I thought was Venus. Later, I discovered the bright light was actually the planet Jupiter. What an amazing thing to see with the naked eye.
A couple of months later, Jupiter was back, shining brightly on the dark edge of the Moon, as if it were peeking around the Moon to spy on us. Seeing planets in person doesn’t make the solar system feel smaller; rather, it reminds me of our inability to comprehend what we see most every night, planets that are hundreds of millions of miles away, or starlight that has been traveling for hundreds of millions of years. It’s all right there in the night sky for you to see and be a part of.
My favorite celestial event to witness happened about a month ago. We reached the westernmost portion of our run and turned back around, heading east. It was a dark and moonless morning. As we made our way down the road, I was focused on the ground beside me, searching for a set of old deer bones I’d previously spotted in a ditch. My wife grabbed my shoulder, telling me to look up. High in the black sky was a single point of bright light, much brighter than the stars behind it.
The light was drifting northward. As it traveled, it brightened, creating a long trail of blooming light, glowing in halation like a powerful spotlight cutting through a foggy sky. The whole path it traveled also lit up and lengthened and expanded. Stopped in our tracks, we stared at the sky, mesmerized, trying to make sense of what we were seeing.
Some ancient tug of superstitious unease made the air feel electrified. I knew it wasn’t a UFO, but it sure looked like one. Several minutes passed, and the light was growing longer and brighter, creating an enormous streak in an otherwise black sky. It looked like a large comet, its long tail in pursuit, sweeping through the air above, and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. The entire experience felt surreal.
I took a quick picture with my phone, and we started running again, continuing east toward the light. It took several minutes to process what was happening and to realize what I was seeing. And although the truth was more mundane than a UFO or comet, the sheer physics behind what was happening made the event feel personal.
Although we never saw it, the object in the sky was a large airplane spitting out a long contrail. We see these all the time during the day, but on that dark morning, several chance factors aligned perfectly. The plane was in the right place, in the right weather, flying at the right speed and altitude, and in the right direction. And we, a whole other positional point of reference, were awake and facing the right direction from the right distance and elevation, and at the right time.
All these factors came together to create a unique phenomenon made possible by the Earth’s curvature. While we were on the ground, still hidden from the sun in total darkness, the airplane was forty to sixty thousand feet in the air, high enough to be fully illuminated by the sun’s bright rays that were bending around the Earth. We were standing in the dark, but the plane and its contrail were lit up as bright as noon.
I feel lucky to live out in the country and to be able to pursue my love of running. Each morning, when I see something that would otherwise have remained unknown to me, I feel an illogical sense that nature is rewarding me for engaging with it. But nature isn’t doing anything special just because I’m there; it is always extraordinary.
Nature is always brilliant, always shining, even when it’s completely dark outside. Nature offers inspiration and life-changing experiences to anyone who shows up with open eyes and an open mind.
Seeing the natural world on my morning runs has changed the way I view the night. It has shown me a greater order, displaying a level of function and design that my human mind couldn’t otherwise conceive. Its tapestry is incomprehensibly complex, elegant; beautiful.
And as I stand in the forest and fields, underneath the planets and stars, witnessing nature’s greatness, I’m reminded that I too am a part of this grand scheme. Within each of us lies the precision, power, beauty, and ruggedness that I encounter while on these dark, empty roads. These magical pathways that take me on far-away journeys, but that always lead me safely back home.