This place has been home for a long time—more than two decades. The sanctuary was quiet and St. Francis was the only figure in the chapel silo as I slipped out into the night. I hear my own footfalls as I make my way through the night to a place that is safe, that wraps me in a friendly coolness and breathes my heart in the vastness of its call. It happens every time: they offer a flashlight and I decline. I have never needed one here. Even on the nights when there is no moon I have never needed one. There are some places that generate their own light from within and this is one of them. Seeing through the darkness is no problem in some places. For two decades I have wandered here at night without a flashlight never losing my way, never not seeing the path.
This is the only place on Earth that I know of where it is so quiet that in Winter, if you stop crunching through the snow and slow your breath, you can hear the snow falling. Yes, hear it. Do you know what falling snow sounds like? A thousand micro-bells that tinkle ever so lightly as their crystalline forms cascade through the air to land softly with a tiny “tink” on pine boughs.
I reach my cabin and open the porch screen, the hinge squeak echoing across the night signaling my arrival to Miranda who is huddled in the corner waiting for me. She comes easily and quickly, licking my hand welcoming me home and insists that I scratch her ears hello by positioning them squarely in my palm. She asks nothing of me except love and an occasional ear scratch. Small price to pay for perpetual unconditional love. I sink into the Adirondack and pull the comforter round me. I lift my heels to the ledge and settle back into the quiet. ‘Randy’ places her jaw on my thigh and sighs deeply as I feel her body shiver.
I match her shudder as Randy, ever the Retriever, retrieves a metaphor from the night for the poet in me. She reminds me that we can send a man up there—to the moon and safely retrieve them even when their odds are slender, but we can’t retrieve our human shadow. We can’t leash it obediently to our sides as we walk through this adventure called life—not even for a moment. Its unruly snarling and snapping jaws sometimes beg a muzzle for it cannot be taken into polite company for lack of civil and simple housetraining.
The shadow should be off limits here in this sacred place. In fact, nothing of its kind should be allowed here. This should be safe haven. This is a place where the human spirit is elevated and celebrated and the soul takes a breath that is long and deep and cool like water. Even here I am reminded of how ardently we defile our salvation: love.
Something calls across the space and something behind me answers. Was it a Screech Owl and her mate? A badger growling because dinner is late? Or is it my mind that momentarily squeaked on the hinges of its gate as it just whooshed out into the cosmos sparkling above my head? I feel kind of empty as I imagine a leaky mind must feel. Maybe my mind has decided this is just too much to ask. Maybe the shadow is supposed to win. Maybe humankind is destined to be crushed by the weight of it. Maybe the darkness is our destiny. Maybe Darth was right. Or maybe I need a different kind of flashlight, one to pop a light saber. Maybe we underestimate the power of the dark side. The valley of the shadow is upon us.
She taps my shoulder. I ignore her once again for she has come to mean something else for me—a sphere reflecting the light certainly, but more. She is something I never knew before. Someone I never knew. She is the goddess, the grandmother, the mystic queen and a symbolic home for someone I have come to know in reflection, as reflection. She is now too: the dancer, the magician, the alchemist, the song, the shaman, and king—he who walks her in dance across the night. I know he is there. I know he is waiting. The moon is a harsh mistress.
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