Use Your Whiskers

It's the season for night walks.

Now that the days are shorter, there are many days when the only time I have to take a walk is when it's already dark outside.

When the sun goes down and the kids are finally in bed, I can stay in with my husband, or I can grab my headlamp and jacket, and call for the dogs.

Fortunately they’re always game.

Once outside, I’m always glad I made this choice. Night walks are special.

* * * * *

In the first couple of years that I lived in this old stone country house surrounded by fields, women from town would sometimes ask me, “Don’t you feel afraid living out there, especially when you're at home at night?”

“Are you kidding?” is always my reaction. We don’t live far outside of town. Crime is low. This countryside exudes peacefulness to me.

There are no dangerous, wild animals, except perhaps for the badger who lives in the field below the house, but he largely keeps to himself.

After living in the city all my life, I say, laughing, I know that the most likely threats are other people -- and there aren’t many of those out here.

I wonder if their fear of living in the country has to do with the town’s medieval roots, when staying inside the city walls was safe, and going beyond was dangerous.

This isn’t my history though.

So I take my night walks, noticing the contrast to how I felt long ago in my early 20s walking home late and alone, through edgy Brooklyn neighborhoods, alert to every shadow, every figure walking my way.

* * * * *

The dogs are leaping and racing in the darkness, nipping at each other playfully, surging ahead and then returning back in a happy bounce.

I smile. They are joyful to be out, eager to stretch their legs and spirit, and so am I.

When we emerge from the trees at the edge of our property, onto the straightaway road that cuts through the fields toward the dark mountains, I switch off my headlamp.

Darkness – and that small surge of fear that always comes with it.

I keep walking, on faith, that my feet will land on smooth, flat earth, will not trip, will not stumble.

Then my eyes adjust.

The light, even from a partial moon, is fantastically bright. I can see the twin tire tracks worn into road stretching ahead.

Nika, the white dog, flies from the bushes onto the road in a jubilant leap. The white paintbrush of Mini’s tail bobs ahead. The mountains are a black outline in a new world of deep shades of blue.

The stars are now visible, sparkling in the black canopy draped over our heads.

This.

This feeds my soul like nothing else.

I imagine the town women now, what they’d say about me. Walking in total darkness.

I do it whenever I can.

I'm thinking of Tony, my wilderness survival teacher back in Oregon. “Turn off your headlamps,” he’d scold us. “Use your whiskers.”

He wanted us to learn – to re-learn – how to use our senses. To perceive where we were. To intuit where to place our feet, and how. To gauge subtle changes in smell, temperature, and wind. To sense sound, and presence, including danger.

The darkness has a powerful way of bringing out these instincts, and yes, the sensation of having whiskers.

It is a reminder of all the resources we have within ourselves to walk on this earth and make our way, just like any other creature -- the dogs scurrying across the fields, or the foxes, deer and badger who also share this land with us.

It’s a way to remember to trust your instincts. To trust yourself.

Use your whiskers.