Walking in the Dark

This is a piece Pen wrote for the ever-excellent Out of Doors Programme on BBC Radio Scotland.

We’re lucky enough to live where there is just about no light pollution which means on a clear night the entire sky looks like a glitter ball. But it also means on over-cast nights, the darkness is so thick you an almost taste it. (I’m not sure what it would taste of mind, bitter dark chocolate perhaps?!)

This morning, it’s 7am and still as black as wet bitumen. I’m becoming more and more accustomed to venturing out in the dark, it’s pretty much become my winter pursuit, quite simply because, like lots of us, I became a dog owner during lockdown.  We have such short days at the moment that with 2 very energetic young labs I don’t have much choice but to walk them in the dark. So, I’m out most days climbing up the hill above the house, navigating my way by headtorch! 

And all this time spent walking in the dark has got me thinking afresh about our relationship with the dark and how different it feels and is to explore, not just these woods but any landscape when there’s little or no light.

I guess what I immediately notice is that I’m only able to focus where the light of my headtorch falls. My world has shrunk to just what I can see in the beam of light as I look around, but while it narrows down my field of vision, I’m conscious that walking in this way can’t help but make me more mindful of where I’m walking. 

I like the constant sense of reveal that comes as a result. In daylight I just don't notice the shape of the broken bracken, the sharps and flats in the shadows between the rusting ferny fronds.  I’m not sure in day light I’ve ever take a moment to appreciate how the frost dusts even the little hillocks of mud where the deer passed not long ago. A hoof print suddenly glinting in the light of the torch feels like a treasure.  I doubt I’d pause to notice either of these things in a day time walk. 

Up in the birchwoods, which are particularly difficult to navigate in the dark, I often have a sense of being lost – the deer paths all but vanish - but that only adds to the sense of discovery. Yesterday I was up here and lost my way only to stumble on a large crop of frozen chanterelles, shivering in the beam of my torch.  I thought I’d rooted out all the chanterelles up here so I love the idea that by walking in the dark you can rediscover.

And that business of feeling a touch lost, of not quite being able to get your bearings pushes me into thoughts of our fear of the dark.

One of the things I always find captivating about being out in nature is it nudges me to look for meaning and metaphor to help me make sense of other areas of my life.  And when I’m in the dark that means I can’t help wondering what I can learn from how I respond to the shapes and shadows, the fears it throws up.  I ask myself why I’m afraid?

Lots of us are, quite naturally, afraid of the dark and with good reason.  We don’t know what surprises it might hold.  We learn from when we’re little to be afraid of those dark corners, the monsters under the bed. But as I get older, I find I’m less and less afraid of what lies hidden around each of life’s corners.

The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, said

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."

But I think there’s also something to be said for exploring and understanding how you feel about walking through the darkness of the natural world, so you can get better at walking through your own personal darkness perhaps?  It works the other way round for me too.

I’m sure I was more afraid of the dark before I had cancer. Cancer leapt out and surprised me, but I slayed that particular monster under my bed – my own personal Jabberwock as I sometimes think of it – so now I’m less concerned about just what might come whiffing through these tulgey woods. I try to be more curious than anxious about life’s unpredictability and that applies when I’m walking on the hill in the dark too. 

But of course fear is there because its useful, it protects us, when you’re walking in the dark it lends an extra edge to your journey.  Everything is heightened, it allows you to really tune in to the world around you more acutely.   If you can find that sweetspot where you hold onto just enough fear to allow it to turn up the dial on all you encounter, it’ll make your journey all the richer and rewarding.   The smells, the press of the cold against your skin and, most of all your hearing, everything is dialled up a notch, waiting for the snap of an unexpected twig.  That burn you can hear in the background never sounds so loud in daylight, now it roars at me. 

I’ve come to a path which leads up a steep track between the pines.  When I came here in summer with Mark and Helen we stood and gazed up through the branches and I remember Mark likened it to a cathedral, your eyes constantly drawn up through the tall trees to the sky but now in the dark the space feels so much smaller, you’re swaddled, and I find that comforting, that blanket of darkness.

It’s interesting, although I usually venture up here in the dark alone, I don’t ever find it lonely or boring.  There’s the dogs of course to keep me company but I also take podcasts with me – so I feel these woods are full of the people I meet while I’m listening and their stories remain woven through the dark landscape.

My mum always used to tell me that without darkness you’d never fully appreciate the light and I think that’s never more true than if you see the shift from dark to light out in nature.  So, I find I’ve become a bit of a dawn hunter on these morning walks.  If I time it right my favourite thing is to land here where I am now, just as dawn starts to break.  The thick plantation pines have given way to a much more ancient woodland where there’s huge gnarly trees, throwing crazy shapes in the half light.  I often come here and then pause, waiting for the sun to rise, it’ll come up just over the rise on the south shore of the loch then pour in through the branches and it is a moment of pure magic.  Every time I witness it, I fill up.  I love it.  And then I turn for home.

So, while I head back down the hill I’ll leave you with a quote by the American Pullitzer prize winning poet Mary Oliver. She said "Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."