NIGHT WALKING--A Pleasant Time for Quiet Reflection with an Occasional Surprise

by Craig Bennett*

I’ve nearly always loved the nighttime. Ever since I became too old to be afraid of the dark, I’ve found the darkness of night to be an unexpectedly rewarding time to be awake and conscious—especially if I could be outdoors. When I became a good bit older than that, I came to enjoy going outside and walking at night. Not necessarily late at night, like around midnight or sometime in the wee hours of the morning, but just after dark and on to maybe ten in the evening, or a little thereafter.

One of the attractions such activity held for me was that I could be all alone. Nobody else was usually about during those hours, going from one place to another on foot back when people still walked to where they were going, as long as it was sufficiently close by and the weather was not especially discouraging. I would roam all over town, just enjoying the quiet, the peace, and the feeling of repose and relaxation that comes with the knowledge that the day’s activities are over and there are no more places we have to go, things we have to do, people we have to meet, or goods we have to obtain until the sun comes up again tomorrow.

Now and then I would start out just after dinner, when the sun was beginning to set, the air was gradually cooling, and whatever business had filled the daylight hours was shutting down for the night. Then I would walk out to the edge of town and cross to the other side of rt. 724, where the landscape was suddenly empty of neighborhoods, factories, stores, and other evidences of greater civilization. There were only farms, widely scattered; woods that had not yet been cleared to make room for cultivation; meadows, often populated before and after milking time by the Guernsey cows that seemed to be the breed of choice for local farmers. There would be very little traffic, if any. The tractors would have been parked for the night somewhere near the barn and the farmhouse. The chickens would be settling into their places in the henhouse. And the farmer and his family would be tidying up after a hearty meal, ready for a relaxing evening before turning in for a well-earned rest.

I would enjoy just strolling along the country roads until it began to get dark enough that I knew I had to turn my footsteps homeward if I still wanted to be able to see where I was going. There were no street lights out in the country, and most farmhouses, few and far between, were not yet likely to have brightly burning security lights to discourage roving marauders with evil ambitions. But every once in a while I strayed a little too far afield, or started my evening’s wanderings a little too late, or committed some other judgmental error that left me still some distance from the edge of town and home when full dark had fallen.

If there happened to be a fairly bright moon that evening, things weren’t too difficult. But it was on a couple of moonless nights that I had some encounters that I remember with a smile and a shake of the head, but which seemed anything but humorous at the time.

One took place in total darkness when I was apparently walking past the edge of a meadow. I could barely make out where I was going, walking rather slowly and carefully, one cautious step at a time. Then, with startling suddenness, there was a loud rustling of grass being trampled and the sound of many rapid, heavy footsteps. For one eternal, panic-stricken second, I realized that something large, heavy, numerous, and swift was rushing toward me through the darkness—and I had no idea what it was!

I felt that immediate rush of adrenaline shoot through my system with lightning speed. My whole body tensed for the “fight or flight” response, whichever would be called for within the next second or two. I froze, waiting for my ears, my nose, or some combination of my other senses to supply me with information that my eyes could not. And what I got was a message from the rational part of my brain: cows. I was being approached—rapidly, noisily, and entirely invisibly—by a bunch of cows.

I already knew that I was probably walking near the edge of a meadow. I could see no outline of trees against the night sky along the edge of the horizon, and with no houses visible either, that left a lot of empty space on my port side. I had seen plenty of cows in several different nearby meadows during daylight. It took me a moment to realize that they might possibly be there at night, as well, if they didn’t need to be confined to the barn for the convenience of the morning milking.

The rustling and heavy footsteps stopped a few feet away from me and came no farther: a fence, most likely, that I could not see in the darkness. Feeling secure in my conclusion that I had been startled by nothing more than a bunch of curious cows, I relaxed and resumed my careful walking. But I had to smile at myself. In all my nighttime wanderings, I had never encountered anything to be genuinely afraid of, and I never expected to. But the total darkness, the caution I was already exercising with each step, and my own lack of close familiarity with the particular type of beast that approached me so unexpectedly created a combination of circumstances that provided me with a shock and a fright such as I couldn’t recall ever having before.

Needless to say, I arrived back home safe and sound, just after the rest of the family had retired for the night. But the next morning, they got a good chuckle from my account of the previous evening. And then there was the time when I had all but overtaken and might have stepped on a wandering skunk while out walking on a similarly dark night. However, that, as they say, is another story…

* Craig H. Bennett, author of Nights on the Mountain and More Things in Heaven and Earth, available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and most book stores

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