Hike

An hour after sunset and the cyclical darkness on Earth suddenly merges with the blackness that is always above the sky, that is always there - beyond the blue dome. The night has launched at us from cosmos as this side of the planet turned over inside the ancient sunbeam. The abyss descends from the outer space and shuffles the low grass by the lake and my fishing rod remains untroubled by anything save algae. The waters are muddy and shallow, we were throwing the lines far into the lake all day, we ventured the windy bay by boat and didn't catch anything. The fire needed more wood and we occupied ourselves with daring the dry thicket in the darkness and dragging the claw-like branches of some unknown, down to earth, vast, stout, and terribly dry and obviously long dead tree. We brought it inside the lighted circle on the sandy shore and the flames devoured the wood and it was natural firework. The circle became wider and brighter for a few minutes. We sat by the fire until it began to die out and we had to brave the night again. The potatoes baked in the hot ash. Myriads of the urban drudgery behind and probably as much ahead, but this burning end of a twig is shrouded in the veins of fire, it is becoming darker - like the evening became darker when the sun sank behind the hills - until it is a coal pulsing with heat and by the morning the night shall dissolve it into ashes. Something invisible with an attitude of a beaver charged the sedge behind our backs and there was a quiet splash. A bat or a nightbird was seen for a split second at the edge of our lighted space. The bright cupola of the campfire was a rhyme to thousands of electric dots on the opposite bank. Nothing happened that night, but I carried a weapon to my bed. Was that a suspiciousness of a city dweller or a suitable instinct of an agrarian's descendant? The morning was as dry and barren as the dead tree we had burnt. It was a different world now.