Seeing in the Dark
A night hike through the UGA Costa Rica Campus.
It’s 5:47 pm in San Luis de Monteverde. The sun is beginning to shift further below the horizon. You look out into the sky and follow the soft glowing light before your eyes. Night is gradually setting in. You begin the thirteen-minute countdown to dinner at 6:00 pm. On most days, dinner typically marks the end of your day but not tonight. Tonight, you’re going on a night hike.
If you’re anything like me, you might be unprepared to see beyond the darkness and unsure of how to experience that which you cannot see. So why hike at night? Think about all the nocturnal creatures of the wild who are just waking up when the rest of the world is going to sleep. An almost entirely new world exists out there. The challenge present before you is figuring out how to see in the dark.
You follow the resident naturalists who guide you and the other eleven hikers towards the trail behind the intern houses. Theodora, a native of Cyprus, and Louise, a native of England, lead the group. You find that the trail becomes more narrow as you move further along. The path naturally forces you to walk in a single-file line.
A light mist fills the air. The wind sways the leaves on the branches from side to side. Small water droplets that fall in between the leaves make their way onto the notepad causing the paper to crumble. The black ink bleeds forming asymmetrical blotches.
You shine the light into the canopy and the trees tower above you, extending as far as you can see. Shortly after, Theodora and Louise decide that it’s time to turn off the flashlights. All of a sudden, you become engulfed by the absolute darkness in which you are now fully immersed. There are no street lights or headlights to illuminate the world that surrounds you.
If you’ve lived in a large, urban city for the majority of your life, just as I have, a night hike among the vast darkness of the woods can be a slightly frightening experience at first. For one, we often associate the dark with mystery and evil. Therefore, we find the darkness to be the perfect backdrop for the entertaining horror films that play upon our sense of fear. However, the darkness removed from the big screen seems far beyond the limits of our comfort zone, particularly for those of us with limited experience in hiking after dark.
The atmosphere within the forest is unlike what we, as residents of the city, have come to know and understand. In the city, complete darkness doesn’t truly exist or at least pales in comparison to the absolute darkness that one can find within the forest.
You notice that your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness. Even so, your vision remains limited. You start to realize how well adapted the organisms that inhabit this area have to be in order to survive and thrive within this environment. Along the way, you begin to acquire a greater appreciation for a world that you wouldn’t have been able to experience had you not ventured into the unknown.
As you search for the light, attempting to regain control of your sight, you begin to rely heavily on your other senses. These senses have now become sharper in order to compensate for your loss of sight, revealing what your eyes cannot. As a result, you are equipped to experience the outdoors in an entirely new way. For example, you notice yourself taking in the repertoire of sounds and aromas instead of tuning them out like you might when you’re relying mostly on your eyes. The mild fear, terror, and anxiety elicited by the darkness is slowly converted into awe.
The first creature you see is one that you might find in your kitchen.
“We have a lot of different species of cockroaches here in the forest. They don’t really have all the pests and diseases that we associate them with in urban areas. These are actually really good for the forest because they help to decompose around 40% of the material — they’re not at all the bad guys that we think they are,” says Theodora.
In the foreground, you hear the many conversations taking place. In the background, you hear sounds produced by the crickets, katydids, and bats. The crickets and katydids rub parts of their bodies together to produce melodious mating calls unique to the species. These mating calls are used to attract female mates who are equipped with the organs that can detect these sounds.
While you’re trying to distinguish the sounds and examining the katydid, whose camouflage makes it almost invisible, you spot the short limbs and pale belly of the dink frog which is actually becoming more rare to find in Monteverde. Some researchers hypothesize that this decline in the population may have occurred as a result of a fungal disease. Others suggest that this decline is climate-change induced. Researchers have yet to reach a thorough conclusion, but they have noticed a general decline in the amphibian population.
While the group is making its way to catch a glimpse of the dink frog, a leafcutter ant moves about. The size of the lady soldier’s head, which houses her huge mandible, seems enormous in comparison to the rest of her body. Take note of the fact that the giant head can be used by anyone wounded and bleeding in the jungle. If the head of the ant is placed within the wound and the body is taken off, the head will come together and act as a stitch.
As the group moves further into the trail, there is a request to move a few steps back to examine the walking stick. The walking stick can play dead, shed its leg and have it regenerate, and swing in the wind if it feels threatened. Only a few feet away, the orange-kneed tarantula remains burrowed inside its hole. Edith, who is about eight years old, is indeed poisonous. She and the other members of her species found within the new world flick the hairs on their backs at anyone who threatens them.
To avoid the rash and painful swelling caused by the tarantula, the group admires the creature from a distance. The spider will sting as its very last resort. Stinging is both taxing and expensive since it needs the venom not only for defense but to capture its prey. The spider will not only attempt to captivate its prey. The female tries to eat the male, and she is actually successful on many occasions.
More than halfway through the hike, the group comes to a fork in the trail, and takes a left. The trail leads to a large white board illuminated by small fluorescent lightbulbs. Will, the moth intern, wakes up at 3 am to capture photos of the moths in order to document all of the diversity in the area. He uploads the photos to the database for other scientists to identify. His research about these sensitive creatures not only yields data about the moths present in Monteverde, but also reveals information pertaining to temperature and climate change.
As we approach the dining hall porch and return to familiar territory, the dark world of the woods no longer seems so foreign and unfamiliar. We stop to admire the cane frog who joins us as we all become observers of the scorpion feasting on a cockroach. The cockroach is both the first and the last creature we see on the hike as our hike comes full circle. I ask Louise to highlight some of the key differences between the night hike and the day hike. She explains that the day hike provides information on the trees, plants, and the symbiotic relationships.
“They’re a lot more about ecology,” she says.
When commenting on the night hike, she talks about the ways in which the unfamiliarity of the night and the location itself evokes not only emotion within hikers, but also a sort of fear as it challenges us to venture into the unknown.
“At the night hike, you’ll get more feeling — it helps us realize how vulnerable we humans are,” Louise says.
There’s an entirely new world to experience that isn’t available during the day. Open your mind and allow yourself to feel the differences even if you can’t physically see them.
