Night Life

I love nighttime.

[I'm also a fan of simplistic sentences, but that's not the point of this post. Wouldn't that be dull?]

It hasn't always been like this. I remember a point in time when I was scared of the dark.

We all go through that phase when we're little. I mean, the dark is scary. Anything could be out there and we wouldn't know it. When we get older we realize it's just a pair of pants draped over a chair or a jacket hanging up, just a broom behind the door or the vacuum in the corner. The dark doesn't seem so scary anymore -- just inconvenient. You stub your toe on a table and instead of being relieved that it was a table and not something mean and furry, you're frustrated because you knew it was there and weren't conscious enough to avoid it and now your toe hurts.

Here's the thing. I'm a jumpy person. (Half my readers just said, "Um -- duh.") Dark didn't necessarily go well with me. I'd freak out a little bit every time something moved and I didn't know what it was. One family cat in particular seemed to know every time I set foot outside, because he'd go into stealth mode -- as cats do -- and sneak up on me as I was laying in the driveway watching the stars.

To be honest, the dark still scares me in the wrong circumstances; my parents' house is downright freaky at night. The outdoors? They don't scare me anymore. One night in sixth grade, something shifted.

It was simple. Extremely simple. I had been babysitting at the neighbor's house and her brother got home. Usually, he gave me a ride home -- the whopping equivalent of about two city blocks. Dark and creepy for a 12-year-old kid. That night, however, I opted to walk.

Now, had I been in the running mood, it would have taken about thirty seconds for me to get from their front door to mind. But I decided it would be better to stroll.

Halfway there, I realized just how Dark it was. At the time, our little part of the world was much more rural than it is now. One house had a yard light. There were quite decidedly no street lights. And there was no chance that a car was going to be coming down the road ... and if there had been one, I would probably dive into the ditch, just in case that someone had been drinking a bit too much. (Not that the ditch would be safer.)

As I walked, I realized something: it was beautiful, seeing the world like this.

When I moved to Rapid City for school, I had the chance to see the world like that much more often. I was a college student, which apparently meant I didn't require nearly as much sleep anymore. Nighttime was the best time for conversation, particularly from the hills behind the school. Never mind that you ran the risk of walking through someone's living room when you went for a late-night walk; we just wanted to be out where we could see the whole city and talk about the mysteries of life. If we didn't feel like walking, we could drive out to the Evil Empire and toss a football or buy pizza rolls to take back to the dorms. Out at Storm, that was the only time to go hiking because you didn't have any responsibilities right at the moment and then you could count shooting stars and talk, far away from visiting campers who might otherwise be awakened by your conversation. After moving off-campus, it was the best time for roaming random city streets at odd hours, or finding random hiking trails in the middle of town, or making a midnight snack and sitting in the living room while one of the guys played a song about magnesium. (Magnesium? Or zinc? Why can't I remember?)

It didn't much matter WHAT -- but the when was quite consistent. Late. Or early. In any case, dark.

Yesterday, I went north for the day (which will hopefully inspire a post sometime before the month ends ... but we all saw how long it took to post anything about LifeLight). This required waking up and leaving long before sunrise and returning after sunset.

And I realized something: I miss my night hours.

It's not that I'm a night person over a morning person. Quite the contrary -- I love both times of day. It really boils down to NOT being an afternoon person. I get bored in the afternoon, lose my concentration, tend to be in my worst mood for the day ... No fun. But get me in the darker hours of the day and I'm alarmingly cheerful.

It could be the awesomeness of how night begins and ends. It could be that I'm just that big a fan of stargazing. It could be the peacefulness of it all. It's most likely a combination of those and a dozen other things.

And I miss it. This "real life" thing doesn't allow much time to enjoy night hours if I intend to function during my required day hours (which I do). I can't take a nap in the afternoon to make up for the extra couple of hours I was up at night. (I don't count dozing off for thirty seconds at my computer as a nap.)

It's funny -- some things change that you didn't think about. It never occurred to me that hey, I wasn't going to get to see my favorite time of day as much.

But occasionally, there are still chances. Like when the opportunity arises to take a road trip north. Or when I'm working the afternoon shift in the pilot plant (if they ever let me do that again).

Or when I wake up unexpectedly in the middle of the night and think, "Hey, now's as good a time as any to get up."

Sometimes you have to take what you can get. And sometimes it turns out to be totally worth it.