Imagine:
First,
you hear the water. The stream rests in
the foreground of your setting, so it strikes you first. It catches the ears more so than the eyes;
first, because there are enough pines to block it from view so you only hear its
laughing, delectable presence pattering against your eardrums and, second,
because dusk is fading rather quickly and dark is seizing supremacy. Of course, the bubbling of the brook is only
the first sensation to roll over your senses.
The scent of nature, predominantly that of pine needles, clings gently
to the air as you breath it in. Your
eyes have already discovered a feast of sights too vast to consume all at once:
the mighty mines, the fading rays of sunlight dancing over the water, and the
mountain peaks towering over everything before and behind you. A New Mexico canyon camping ground has far
exceeded your expectations. Your
excitement has already reached a peak, since you already watched the greyish
blue shapes on the horizon forming into real towers of rock, earth, and trees for
hours as you drove closer to them across the flat, desert-like terrain of
Oklahoma. The blood in your veins pulses
a little faster than usual, quickened by a number of joyous anticipations.
Then
you hear the ominous words “midnight hike.”
That
particular phrase only raises the already high spirits of your traveling
companions, but it dampens yours slightly.
You have never hiked in the dark before, and certainly never on a
mountain trail in the dark. You don’t
even know where that scraggly little dirt path goes, or if it goes anywhere at
all. Being someone who admits to a
slight fear of the dark and having a great deal more terror for the darkness
than you care to confess, you aren’t too keen on the whole idea. These traveling companion—your sister and
father—share a wild, adventurous steak which often causes you to not entirely
trust them, though you always believe in them.
However, they will go with or without you, and it would probably be better to go and die with
them than be left in a tent waiting for those who might never return.
So,
you go.
The
result pleasantly surprises you.
Granted, you get an anxious certainty that you’re about to run into
danger now and then—the sort of feeling that stirs a queasiness in the deepest
pit of your gut and makes every hair on your body bristle. However, you keep enough bravery from your
fearless company to reason that not every twig in the dark can be a rattlesnake
and none of the rustling bushes you note are large enough to conceal a
bear. Once you rationalize that, you
actually start to enjoy yourself. The
path winds along the stream, so you keep the soothing benefit of its sound and
never have to climb higher than the canyon floor. Of course, you can’t really see your way at
all, but there’s a sort of thrill in learning the knack of staying on the path
by the contrast in sound and feel of dry grass under your feet instead of the
little dirt road. And what you can see
of the nature around you possesses a strange, resounding sort of enchantment in
the dark—something that almost feels endless.
And
then you reach it.
The
pines suddenly form a doorway that opens into a little glade, where the stream
gets broader beside you and runs quieter: slow and still. Everything almost seems to let out a long
breath: silent and serene. You look up
and there hangs the waning moon, slipping through a gap in the clouds that
seems custom cut to allow the silvery light to bathe the landscape. Everything from the mountain tops to the stream
at their base is suddenly luminescent—brilliant in twilight beauty that practically sings out a melody of praise
to its creator. And then, in the very
moment you think only the clouds stand in the way of a perfect scene, the
overcast curtain suddenly rolls back.
Starlight twinkles down on the night you once found frightening, and you
know all fear has been conquered. In its
place is a bottomless thirst for Beauty
which the endless glory about you will never fail to satiate. Then, for that Eternal Moment,
You
feel Infinite.
