Gifts of the Night
Near the first anniversary of my father’s death, I traveled to the Pacific Northwest with a desire to hibernate with what I had squirreled into my soul and to see what I could make of it.
I began a week-long writing retreat on Whidbey Island guided by Christina Baldwin, storycatcher and guide. I had signed up months before in the urgency to write the story of what these recent years had offered me, change and loss and magic. What message was there for the sharing? The bulk of my observations spilled out in journal entries and poems, collages and paintings, and a deep desire to arrange it into a sensible whole.
During the days at Aldermarsh, I settled into the island’s deep autumn season with its dripping rain, leafless alders, and moist forest floor. At night, I nestled under blankets in my tiny forest cabin while the shadowed in from windows on all sides. I tunneled deeper into my soul’s sunless places.
Midway through the week in my cabin’s cocoon of darkness, I woke to the sound of owls, whowho-whowho-who, a call and response, a layering. Like the cabin walls, the owl calls were near. I turned beneath the covers, adjusted the pillows, ears alert. Whowho-whowho-who. The patter of rain that had lulled me to sleep quieted, and I had to pee. Get outside, my body whispered. Stand with the owls.
My phone rested on the ledge beside me. All it needed was the warmth of my hand to indicate the time in large, glowing numbers. I resisted. It didn’t matter. I raised the blankets, stepped onto the floor, slipped my feet into my boots, bent to the Hobbit-height knob and opened the door. A few steps away from the porch landing, my eyes lifted. Stars. A spray of them netted in the treetops. Then whowho-whowho-who. I squatted and my urine streamed onto the deep cushion of the earth’s floor. Shared territory.
The night urged me to find an open view of the sky. I crept toward the boardwalk that led to the meeting house where our story circle would again gather in the light of day. I stepped with caution, guided by soft trail lights. Soon my feet hit wood plank. I moved to the middle of the marsh. The crescent moon shepherded a flock of stars The lithe trunks of the alders bowed toward me in unison. We, too, are the world, they seemed to say. Whowho-whowho-who, the owls joined in. We, too, we, too.
I thought of my ancestors and Daddy and wondered if they had ever been wakened by owls. Had they ever wandered into a clearing in the deep night of autumn with a yearning to join in, to be a part of the chorus, that which knows it matters in the balance of things and that becomes itself fully for the sake of the world?
