Sapling #103 — Visible
When twilight sets in, he puts on his hiking boots and leaves his den, like a nocturnal animal. The setting sun arches towards the horizon and he follows in its wake, vaguely hoping it might pull him across the divide between hill crest and sky.
Is this why people get a dog, to provide them with an excuse for this kind of walk? All he has, is an unrest stirring as the light dies, a longing for aimless movement. It is not an escape since there is nothing to escape from, but freedom goes by many names.
Uphill at first, along the sagging and far too familiar pavement, then across the street and into the narrow corridor between wall and thicket, out towards the field.
Along with the moist, green smell of evening, dusk creeps out of its hiding place in the shadows. It devaluates colours to greys and nibbles at the edges of facades, garden walls and growths. In the dark, all shapes blend. Contours soften, substance becomes less solid. Objects, usually drawn with the straight lines of daylight, now only seem to exist as creatures of imagination, or in touch.
A low branch grasping his coat, a loose boulder rolling underfoot: the unexpected encounters with a world he can no longer perceive. He turns nocturnal, a creature of smell and sound and antennae.
The darkness smooths the roughness of both trail and roadside. The darker it gets, the more relaxed his step becomes. During the day, those who are observant by nature find themselves constantly aware of the eyes of the world. It’s a welcome relief to leave the intrusive stares behind for a while. To be invisible here, in this moment, and to put one foot in front of the other almost mechanically, helps to stop time. Even his thoughts fall silent. He is a ghost, a silent apparition glimpsed, perhaps, from the corner of an eye, but judged imaginary, like the foxes that sometimes frequent the city centre, wild and impossible to cage, a brief presence reminding us that there are things in this world with roots tougher than concrete.
He reaches the open field. A hunter’s trail runs straight to the other side of it and he locates it by habit. If you walk the same landscape long enough, it starts to take on the form of a book with chapters. There’s the thicket from which the hare once sprang at sunset. Over that curve of the hillside the falcon cut his prayer short to ambush an unfortunate field mouse. His walk isn’t only a walk, either by day or night, it is also a book of connection to the land, to which each stroll adds another page. Some pages carry the sound of rain in over-filled puddles, and the creaking of branches on gusts of wind. Others are impenetrably still, like mist. It is a story that tells of encounters, also with oneself.
At the other end of the field, he heads into the grove. Civilization is never far away, even here the light of some distant street lamp occasionally pierces the trees. But there is a wilder feel to this place, nonetheless. Something rustles in the understory, a late blackbird shoots across the trail like a projectile horizontally fired, and dives into a bush. From a nest somewhere high up a magpie chatters a gentle two-note goodnight.
Here, he is far more conscious of how much there is he cannot see. And like a child clasping its hands in front of its eyes, his own blindness doesn’t mean he can pass unnoticed through a realm where now the creatures wake for whom the darkness doesn’t equal a veil.
The photographer inside him stirs. He reaches for his camera.
Does one ever stop watching, even in the dark? To have all in focus means to be safe, to spot the approaching danger before it has noticed you. Vigilance allows you to dive onto the shoulder just in time for the oncoming traffic to miss you, or to turn to face a shop window, seemingly carelessly, so the acquaintance you couldn’t face a conversation with passes you by unawares.
The camera, too, is a shield of unapproachability, a vizor through which to shoot the world without having to participate in it.
But here, in the dark, that kind of cover doesn’t work. He is far more visible to all the nightlife surrounding him than he ever is in broad daylight. And to share a fraction of what they are seeing, he needs an artificial eye, as an extension of his own gaze.
Was that a pair silent wings, gliding between the trees? Owls are ghosts, too, of the most enchanting and elusive kind. He is no owl, but he can be silent, and patient.
Wooden pole. Light-sensitive lens, shutter speed of several seconds. And there the image jumps out from the display, of improbable colour and depth, with shades of texture and nuance that, a few degrees sidesways, are utterly invisible. From a flat, black screen emerges a three-dimensional world.
The camera eye renders the nocturnal world visible but doesn’t make it more familiar. The grass ablaze, the poisonous green spills of stray light or street lamps, show the world of man with the extra-terrestrial aura usually only witnessed by animals. These are colours he cannot live in, at least not for long, or willingly.
But they are the world, here and now. What does one do, when the compass suddenly points to the unknown? Dive into it, surrender? Or recoil, snap the display shut and hastily make for the familiar world of lamp light and asphalt, shoulders hunched and hands thrust in pockets?
The wanderer does neither. He stays where he is, in the middle of the path, eyes fixed on the darkness, ears open, skin a membrane for the night wind to touch. He allows it all, himself and his unease just as much as the wriggling, rooting world around him, both visible and invisible. He takes deep breaths and hears the sighs of tree tops. Here live creatures. Here sleeps the understory. Tomorrow, by daylight, this moment will be long gone. But now, it is all there is. And he is a part of it.
He makes it last, as long as he can, as long as he dares.
The SAPLING series is a joint project with artist and illustrator Jurgen Walschot.
Saplings are creative sprouts. I will write to the images, he will draw to the words.
