Stepping out from the warmth of our neighbor’s house after Thanksgiving dinner this evening, it wasn’t the night chill that struck me. It was the darkness.
As we drove across the highway, our headlights were the only light anywhere. The phrase “profound darkness” came to mind.
So much of what we love here has to do with light: the sunrises, the sunsets, the brilliant sunshine in a vast bright blue sky, the rainbows. What could be profound about darkness?
Darkness falls very early this time of year, near the winter solstice, but it carries more meaning here than it did in New York, the city that never sleeps.
On a moonless evening, I looked at the clock after dinner and was startled to find it was only 7 PM. The house was surrounded by complete darkness. It felt like we should already be asleep. What’s the sense of staying up? It’s dark.
I opened the back door, stepped out onto the frosty deck, and listened. Nothing. No sirens, no passing cars, not even any animal noises. To match the darkness, an equally profound silence.
It was never truly dark or quiet in the cities where I have always lived. Even the sight of a street lamp carried the comforting implication that others would be passing by before long.
At night here, I discover what it means to be really alone. Not lonely. Just alone.
When there is no moon here, because there are almost no lights below, the brilliance of the stars is also profound, but in another way. It instills a different sense of solitude. The longer you look, the more you see.
The sight makes me ponder how very small and insignificant I am, of course. It also makes me think about the promise to Abraham, that his children would be numbered like the stars, and I understand as never before how impossible this must have seemed.
Someone here commented recently that many people in the world never see a night sky filled with stars. “It’s true,” I replied. “In Brooklyn, we used to see about three stars at night.” That’s not an understatement. If you kept looking, you might eventually spy five, or maybe even twelve.
When my daughter turned 18, she chose to spend her birthday money in Manhattan getting a tattoo. This was legal at 18, and she knew that we would no longer forbid it.
“Don’t you want to see my tattoo?” she asked a few days later. She had had a small star burned into her shoulder.
“That’s very tasteful,” I said. “But why did you choose a star?”
“Don’t you know that stars are very important to me?” she said.
“No. Why are stars so important to you?”
“Because I remember lying in a sleeping bag staring up at them,” she said. I was so glad that our city child had wanted, at her perceived coming of age, to honor the memory of an earlier time out here, when the same darkness might have moved her to think some deep thoughts.
Like her, I grew up in a city. Back then, I thought that Milky Way was a candy bar. Sure, I learned about it, like I learned about photosynthesis and trigonometry.
Now, on any night when the moon isn’t full, I can walk into the driveway, look up, and see it spilling across the sky, a wide ribbon of luminosity.
There’s our whole galaxy, on edge. My ever-busy mind stops spinning for a moment, and I feel wonderfully empty.
© Lois Wingerson, 2016
(There are some great videos of the night sky in this valley. But they don’t really tell the whole story. You have to come here to appreciate it.)
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One of the many myths about Dubois is that the town originally applied to the US Postal Service to name itself “Neversweat,” and was refused.
Some local homesteaders actually did apply to open a new post office named “Never Sweat” in 1895, and that request was granted, albeit changing the name to one word.
Sitting at my keyboard, I can’t help pondering how communications have changed. Most of my messages reach me today within seconds after they are sent, via a cable that runs past my house and up toward the pass.
The name for the Neversweat post office went away after a few years–but at the request of later residents, not the Postal Service.
Last Saturday, I finally had the chance to show off some of what I brought here from New York: the slinky black trousers, my hand-painted jacket, and my fancy necklace. We had two of the 200 tickets to the sold-out Bighorn Bash, which is probably the hottest gala in town.
Again this year, I asked myself what it is that creates the wonderful clamor at the annual Bighorn Bash (which supports our own home-grown educational institution, the National Bighorn Interpretive Sheep Center). The meal ticket alone is $35, a fairly hefty sum for many people here. But the goodwill in the big room at the Headwaters is palpable during that event.
“I wish I was that rich,” said someone at my table. I knew she didn’t mean she really wishes to be wealthy. She meant she wished that she too could afford to bid outrageously high for the benefit of the Sheep Center.
He drove me out to the East Fork, that wonderful region far on the other side of town where I first fell in love with this territory, while staying at a dude ranch. We climbed up beyond the undulating red rock hills to a nearly barren, windswept ridge where we were higher than the eagles fly.
“Even if you’ve had fun smashing your pumpkin, I’ll gladly take them off your hands!” someone posted in Dubois’ online classifieds today. “My goats and chickens will happily make use of them!”
What happens in one of the most remote small towns in the lower 48? Children do trick-or-treat in Dubois, someone told me. If you live on one of the paved streets with lighting, you know you have to buy candy for that evening.
My friends Judy, Karen, and Michelle were hopping up and down in their winter gear and holding their elbows close as they helped with the event. (It turns pretty cold when the sun drops off this time of year.) Karen said she still felt cold the next day.
Another curiosity reminded me about Halloween long before the day. I began seeing bright orange bags beside the highway. Surely they were filled with trash, not candy. But they seemed to set the mood.
I stopped to inquire. CM relocated to Dubois a few months ago. He moved from New York state to Jackson decades ago, right after high school, intent on living in the real West. Then Jackson began to feel like a big city. Lately, he promised himself that after retirement he would move out here.