I’m on a mission. This evening, instead of settling down with my latest haul of travel writers from the library, I’m standing on the deck and looking up at a waning moon. Since I wrote last week’s post, I’ve been planning to visit the garden at night.
Only a century ago, this plot of land was covered with the kind of old growth that still exists in the park across our narrow road. Life there has been forced to adapt to an influx of daytime visitors, but I’ve been wondering if, after dark, the forest slips back into some of its ancient ways. Do creatures creep out cautiously into a world of recovered quiet? Do even the trees breathe more easily in rhythms that long preceded our hasty human breath? I want to discover if any of the old ways – the old moods – linger in this garden.
There’s no need to wait for my eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. The deck is awash with pale moonlight and with electric light escaping through the kitchen blinds. I make my way down to the gravel garden. There isn’t much darkness here either. The city lights of Vancouver fill the eastern sky with a fluorescent glow, and the ski hills on the mountains stain it with splashes of silver. Together they extinguish the stars and almost outshine the moon itself. I expect to find more darkness in the jungle, but here I’m thwarted again and a little surprised. The neighbouring houses, well camouflaged by foliage through the day, bleed rectangles of brightness into the dusk, and distant buildings on the hillside prick out clearly through the intervening trees. I return to the front garden where yellow rays from the nearby streetlamp filter through cedar boughs and land like spotlights on the wet ground. We are indeed suburban dwellers, firmly on the grid.
I’m reluctant to go back indoors disappointed. I pause and slowly inhale the chilly air. As usual patience pays off. I don’t see any creatures of the night but, little by little, I do notice that I’m standing in a garden transformed. Flagstones in the once-upon-a-time pond float like giant lily pads above the gleaming gravel. The ordinary laurel hedge has turned extraordinary, a shimmering brocade. The camellia blinks diamond droplets from the tip of every leaf, and the familiar bamboo improvises unfamiliar, gracefully shifting shadows. I may have failed to find the slightest trace of ancient forest, or even of true darkness, but I have discovered something else – a surprising beauty.
I’ve just finished reading Margaret Laurence’s account of her time spent in Somalia. In her book The Prophet’s Camel Bell she comments that, “Sometimes a destination turns out to be quite other than you expected.” I’m beginning to think that my destinations always turn out to be other than I expected.
I’m not yet ready to give up on my search for traces of life in an ancient forest. Eight o’clock was too early. Back in the living room I resign myself to staying up late. I read, watch TV, and to keep myself from nodding off I get up from time to time to glance outside and check on the neighbouring windows. Is this how the owls keep a lookout, waiting for the human lights to flick out one by one?
Eventually, only isolated gleams betray the local workaholics and insomniacs. Time to set out. I switch off the reading lamp and the hallway light, but as I pull on a coat and loop a scarf around my neck, I find myself strangely reluctant to leave the house. How ridiculous to feel uneasy about a walk in the yard! I will myself to step outside and to feel my way carefully down the steps from the deck.
Across the road the park is a wall of black. Cloud has dimmed the city glow. The moon has retreated, and the ski hills have shut down for the night. The familiar crunch of gravel hushes as I step onto the soft mulch of the jungle path. I stand still and listen. The faint hum of a distant vehicle trails into the distance, a long diminuendo of the daytime buzz. Then silence, a silence so complete it begins to ring in my ears like tinnitus.
Stealthy movements overhead are only currents of air creaking through the branches and brushing the needles of the hemlock. I seem to be alone here. No padding raccoon disturbs the night. No darting vole. Sparrows and squirrels are tucked away dreaming whatever it is that sparrows and squirrels dream, and I’ve come at the wrong time of year to encounter bats or beetles or the restless birds of summer. If a shadow population exists in the garden, it’s lying low. An owl, I suppose, could be perched nearby, but those suspiciously bright spots are not eyes, they are bleached hydrangea petals.
Deeper in the jungle I’m half-blind, and the path begins to lose its way. It’s only the firm ground that reassures me. I move forward one step at a time, hands prepared to ward off – what? The faint wafts of damp air? A twig snaps underfoot and shocks like a crackle of lightening. Felty blackness seeps like fog from under the laurels, drifts from shrubby recesses and fingers out from hiding places under the largest ferns. It lurks beneath the bridge. A lair for predators? A sanctuary for prey? My cautious progress begins to feel charged with something feral. Not walking now but prowling and I’m thinking, is this how it feels to be cat? Or cougar? I’m no longer sure if I’m seeing or being seen, stalking or being stalked and I hold my breath as if I could shelter in my own warmth, in my own stillness.
I wait.
Sliding from the branches, oozing from the earth, creeping soft pawed from behind, comes – for humankind – a truly ancient aspect of the world after sundown, a slow, cold shiver of fear.
I agree with you. To me the garden at deep night is a bit eerie but still mine. Carry on with your stories that are so sensitive and fascinating. Suzanne
Love your essay. I've just been to Courtney to visit my son and family. They are outside the town in farmland and it is so quiet and completely dark...I sleep like a top. Vivien