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One of my friends has the kind of mother nobody can ever please. He swears her best line is, “Go on. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll just sit here in the dark. Alone.”
I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the longer I think about theline, the more I wonder why she makes it sound like a bad thing and where she is that she can sit in the dark. Or where she can sit alone.
I want to find a place like that. In fact, when I first moved to Richfield almost 20 years ago, I thought I was moving to a place like that. The house we bought was surrounded by woods on all sides, with a dairy farm operating just down the road. At night, it was dark enough that you could see something more than the big dipper in the sky; it was quiet enough that you felt alone.
But as the years have gone by, fast food, convenience stores and video shops have come to Richfield. Houses have been popping up all along my road, and even though you can’t see them when the foliage is on the trees, this time of year their lights show brightly enough to dim the stars when you’re looking up from my house.
Also, almost every house but mine along Millingport Road is surrounded by security lights that give off a science-fiction glare. I don’t understand security lights in the country. Maybe in town, such a light scares off burglars because they’re afraid someone in the neighborhood will see them and call the police, but in the country, it seems to me all the light does is help the bad guys see what they’re doing a little better and maybe illuminate the hind ends of cows.
Even inside, with the lights off, it’s not dark. The house is full of little red and green and yellow lights that are part of all my electronic gear. Everybody has that stuff these days.
The VCR blinks little green dots. If I knew how to set the clock, I guess it would blink green hours and minutes. The stereo blinks red when it’s turned off and green when it’s on. The portable telephone blinks red when it is charging, green when the charge is complete. The non-portable telephone, with keys big enough for dialing 911 in the dark, glows a steady orange. The surge protectors for all these devices are orange, too. I’m telling you, the only time the house is dark is when the power goes off.
I miss the dark. I miss being alone in the woods. I used to say that as soon as another stoplight came to Richfield, I’d move farther back in the woods. One did, and I did, but as the lights and the people keep coming, I’m about out of woods.
It’s not that I am trying to become a hermit or that I don’t enjoy people, but I want a place where there’s not too much that’s man-made between me and the trees and the soil and the critters.
That means I need to look for some new woods, where you can’t see security lights, where it’s dark enough to make out more of the amazing expanse of the Milky Way, where it’s quiet enough to hear the peepers and croakers, where fireflies don’t get confused by porch lights.
Where is such a place, do you suppose?
When I find it, I will triumphantly sit there in the dark.
Alone.
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Sara Pitzer