I was struck with the yin/yang of this photo, with the brilliant light off to the left and the deep darkness off to the right. The sun was low in the sky, and not long after this photo it dipped below the horizon. When I snapped the picture, I thought it wasn’t going to be any good because all I could see on the right side of the tiny viewing screen was complete blackness. It was only after I got home that I realized what I had found.
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| The stealth of the night as it stalks the day. |
Perhaps it was
complete blackness, but there was just enough light in the background to
illuminate what shouldn’t have been illuminated. The presence of the night was palpable, and
it was bearing down upon what was left of the day like a huge rogue wave. When we’re at that “between time,” the
twilight, we are at neither day nor night.
We are poised on a threshold and can go either way: into the light or into the darkness. The spinning of the Earth usually makes that
decision for us, and off we go blindly to wherever we’re sent.
But isn’t it interesting to know there’s a lot out there
that we simply don’t see because we’re so busy chasing the sun disc? The creatures of the night were on their way
to stake their claim of the darkness. I
imagine they did not appreciate my having photographed their territory. By morning, however, they will have
disappeared, gone off chasing the moon in another direction, blinded by the
swiftly approaching sun disc and unable to see the world of light. The land will have flattened out again, the
imposing wave of blackness just trees in the distance, and the secret world of
the night will have disappeared once again.
