warm, open window nights
I’m sitting at my open window at midnight enjoying the night breezes waft off my backyard woods. This is really weird because it is February. At this point in the year I’m usually hunkered down in my living room shivering and hoping that my car starts tomorrow. Not this year. It’s been a warm winter and a pleasant February and today’s been an especially nice, summery day. When the weather allows me I open my windows at night to the woods. There are only so many days of the year that I can do this. It’s either too hot or too cold or too rainy or too muggy or too noisy with the katydids and I’m trying to watch a damn movie.
But when the weather is just right, boy, is it a magical time. The woods come alive at night. During the day they’re just your everyday woods, You know, nice and everything with all the trees and the pretty birds and the rest of the eye candy. But at night the woods are dark and mysterious. At night the woods are all sound and breeze and scent. The creek flowing real fast with a loud burbling that you don’t even hear during the day just because you’re busy staring at stuff. The trees creaking in the wind. A train horn in the distance. My neighbor’s wind chimes gently reminding me that my neighbor has wind chimes. An Eastern screech owl murmuring to itself in a characteristic whinny that sounds less like a bird and more like a horse who’s at peace with the entire world. The arboreal musk of fallen leaves and moist soil. Faint lights from the houses across the woods. That one giant tv in that one house that never seems to get turned off and is always playing a basketball game.
And then, shuffling. Branches cracking. Something is out and about. I run downstairs to get my torch. It’s a high powered torch that I purchased for just such an occasion. And also in case I get lost while hiking. I point it towards the woods. A pair of eyes shines back at me. Is it a raccoon? But then the shape of the animal forms itself behind its eyes and it turns out to be a deer. I don’t know what it’s doing wandering around at midnight in the woods but then I don’t know what I’m doing shining a torch into the woods right now either. We’re both creatures of the night. Especially warm, open window nights.
I love these nights.
