I love the promise of darkness. The hidden treasure just out of sight, the barest sliver of information from a flashlight or camera flash. The photo heading this post is from a side road leading to the coast in Washington state. It was rainy on the day, and I was using a camera picked up from a local thrift shop. I didn’t even intend on using the flash, it just happened before I figured out the right settings.

But I find myself enamored with the intrigue and anxiety it induces. Where does the bridge go? Why can’t we see farther? How does it seem to dissolve into the greenery father in? It’s a liminal space, an entrance to Something Else. It invites us to step Into, to travel Over.

Darkness obscures, but sometimes it does so to hold back a revelation, like a friend who just can’t wait for you to open their gift. And Darkness, likewise, reveals more the farther into it you push. Even when you’re a hundred steps down the path, you look ahead and behind and see more of the same inky black. However, at your feet and a few feet out, you can see mostly clear.

There’s definitely some worry inherent with that obscurity. We love to be sure of the dangers we carry fear for. I carry anxiety for the safety of my loved ones, for the state of my nation, for the health of my own body. For the most part, these are tangible or tolerable fears. In a literal sense, when traveling on a dark trail for a sunrise hike or just after dusk, it’s human to fear that growing ink. I begin to think and muse about what might hide in those shadows. Mountain lions, bobcats, even deer become threatening. I have a distinct memory of walking my old dog a few years back in the early morning. I shone my flashlight down a long ravine between the road and the trail, and saw 4 bright spots about 100 yards away. I could tell it was two deer right by the trail.

I turned tail and chose a different route that morning.

It might seem silly, but in that moment my brain failed to categorize the deer as “safe”. “Safe” is reserved for known things. Understood concepts, natural assumptions, normal behavior. I’d not seen a deer at night up close before. They were not safe. Nowadays I might be willing to walk past them or expect them to run away, but the darkness won that morning.

I would recommend pushing into the darkness. You never know what you might find.