Post-Summer Solstice: Turning toward the dark

The longest day of the year has just passed (belated Bright Solstice blessings!). The nights are now lengthening, darkness expanding slowly but surely, to balance and surpass daylight hours. Most people I know love the long days and short nights of summer, and there's a certain sadness tinging their reflections on this longest (if not hottest; the "dog days" of summer are yet to come) day passing beyond us.

But I, though loath to dwell on how much heat still stretches before the first cool, crisp mornings of autumn, am very glad to have reached the drawing-down half of the year, the point of turning toward the dark.

Am I a depressed soul, seeking literal darkness to mirror within? No, not at all. And I've nothing against sunshine itself and drawn-out sunsets with daylight so reluctant to yield the cosmic stage. It's all beautiful. But there is something innate, some core part of my very being, that yearns for the early-dark days of autumn and winter and all that comes with them.

Perhaps it's that I myself am of autumn, born wrapped in its cool leaf-glittered air. I do find comfort in the long darkness and the sharper clarity of evening's chill. It seems to me a better time for reflection and introspection, and a time for other excitements, far from the teeming, sweaty bustle of summer-scorched pastimes.

Maybe each of our souls resonates most strongly with a particular season that stirs us at an elemental level; maybe we each are spirit-forged with certain binding notes, and when we feel the earth moving into place to play our music, we cannot help but crave and yearn and come alive. We feel the beat and we must dance.

Summer is upon us. But the longest day has passed, and now I feel the turning, pulling at my soul, quickening the rhythm and my steps toward the long-dark nights of home.

Promise of the Road to Nowhere

There is a place in the mountains of the Carolinas, off the beaten path a bit, where the federal government broke a promise many years ago. You can read about it here if you want to know the details, but the gist of it is that there was a partial road built into the woods, ending and abandoned at a big tunnel that trails off into darkness. (The road will never be finished now; about a year ago the county was paid a hefty settlement instead, in the interest of closing the matter.)

This road has become known as the Road to Nowhere, and the tunnel is so wide and deep that it is pitch black inside even at noon. Horse-drawn carts have been brought through there...it's wide enough for about six adults to walk through holding hands. And trust me, at night especially, most people would want to! Otherwise you could wander in the darkness for quite a while, getting turned around repeatedly and never managing to make it to either end.

I have had the opportunity to travel to the end of the Road to Nowhere on a few separate occasions, and I have to say that I believe the moniker to be erroneous.

The first time I went through the tunnel with a group of people I was loosely connected to, I was unprepared for the magnitude of the experience. The clear, silent mountain night wrapped around us, and a few people tucked flashlights into their belts or pockets in case of emergency or panic. There's a certain reverence for the tunnel and the history surrounding it that begs for lights off and for quiet as travelers pass through the dark expanse. We did so in groups of three. I was placed between a man several years my senior and the girl who had invited me. Each of them took one of my hands, and one by one our little groups were swallowed by the blacker darkness of the tunnel.

I'm not sure what I expected, but never having been in such extensive nothing-blackness, I was startled by how thick it seemed to me. The very absence of light and anything recognizable (you could not see your hand touching your nose!) seemed to be its own presence, and I could feel adrenaline rising as a primal defensive mechanism kicked on with the removal of even the dim light of the night sky.

The girl on my left tightened her grip on my hand to the point of pain, and we could hear occasional screams and cries ahead of and behind us as people freaked out in the cloying darkness. The tunnel felt like it took forever to walk through. It was so dark you couldn't tell if you had turned sideways and were about to hit one of the walls or not, and if you spun yourself around, you might not ever figure out 'til you exited, which way you were going.

The man holding my right hand broke down at one point. Tears, outright sobbing. He wasn't the only one in our larger group by far. I heard some of the smaller groups coaxing various members to keep going, to just keep going and they'd get through it. We girls put the sobbing guy between us, and I have to admit, the brief moment when I put his hand in hers and let go to re-orient myself on his other side was unnerving.

Somewhere in there, it hit me. We only experience total darkness when we remove ourselves from every source of light. Even on a new-moon-dark night outside, you have starlight (and many instances of man-made light, in the city)...there are these beacons, natural guides. We're not left to founder, blind. If we ever find ourselves in real, total darkness, it is our own doing.

When we emerged from the tunnel of the Road to Nowhere, I saw with gratitude that "Nowhere" was a starlit forest stretching comfortably all around us, trees like so many jubilant friends, shaking their leaves in the breeze as if to say "Well, finally!"

Not nowhere at all. They got the spacing wrong. I was now here. Out of that smothering deep-dark patch of nothing, into everything free and natural and yes. I'm glad the rest of the road was never built, and the rest of the forest remains as it has for centuries, perhaps longer, in its beautiful now-hereness.

A tribute to the candle-bearers

There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle. ~Robert Alden

That quote is one of my favorites, and it's been on my mind a lot today. There are these extraordinary people in this world who seem to be driven to hold candles out to light the way for others, even on the darkest nights. These are the people determined to make a difference, to matter, to do something in their lifetime that will leave the world better for their footprints having marked it.

They are hailed and hated, praised and pitied for their very natures, for wanting to hold candles in the darkness that seems to press in around us so heavily at times. I believe the people who try to snuff out those candles with spiteful words and hateful deeds as cold as a brisk winter wind, do so out of fear. Fear of change, fear of having to look at their own personal darkness, illuminated by the gentle flames around them. And envy...I think people get mean when they envy the courage of these solid candle-bearers.

What people seldom see is that sometimes, though they would never do it differently, and though the flame itself stays bright and true, the hands of the candle-bearers shake with cold and doubt. The winter wind howls incessantly, swirling all around them like spectral hands swiping at their light, sometimes chilling them to the heart/bone.

Yet these amazing people press onward, sharing their hearts, time, thoughts with others, lighting paths that once seemed nonexistent in the depths of night.

I don't know that I'm really supposed to be a candle-bearer. I'm not a great front man (woman) for a cause, though I am passionate about many. But I know I have a purpose in this world, and I think I may be getting closer to what it is.

What, then, could I possibly bring to the world if lighting it up isn't my gift?

Maybe...maybe I can bring the candle-bearers coats. Encouragement and love to shore them up and keep them warm, a bit of protection against the bitter chill of hatred and doubt that tries hard to envelop and stamp out all of this world's greatest lights, just as it always has tried (and generally ultimately failed!) to do.

I don't know that I have the personality to carry off sweeping changes for the better in this world. But I have an unyielding faith that people can and do accomplish that, and I gladly pledge one huge heart and a ready, steady, kind hand on the shoulder of those whose gifts lead them down that road.

To the candle-bearers out there...what you do for so many others...keep on keepin' on. And if the wind gets too cold, I'd be happy to bring you a coat. In honor of all of you:

"Don't give up
It's just the weight of the world
When your heart's heavy
I, I will lift it for you

Don't give up
Because you want to be heard
If silence keeps you
I, I will break it for you

Everybody wants to be understood
Well, I can hear you
Everybody wants to be loved
Don't give up
Because you are loved

Don't give up
It's just the hurt that you hide
When you're lost inside
I, I'll be there to find you

Don't give up
Because you want to burn bright
If darkness blinds you
I will shine to guide you..."
(Josh Groban)