Night Walk

Night Walk

After another stressy day in quarantine Greybeard decides to have a short walk. He first walks with high pace in the streets, just to reduce tension and feel his body. With the remaining daylight he enters the forest, here it is one or two degrees colder and already almost no light, he barely can see where he puts his feet. Looking for a place to rest he spots a big fallen tree, where he finds a comfortable seat on the trunk, closes his eyes and starts listening to the birds, and various sounds of the breaking night. Every minute the songs of the birds softern, new sounds reach his ears: the noise of the awaking nocturnal animals, he suspects the sizzling close to his feet comes from scampering mice and beetles crawling on the dead dry leaves covering the ground. Now the surrounding trees have completely  lost color, black trunks motionless stretching to the grey sky, which is still visible through their leafless crowns.

Slowly his tension from the day gets released, he is sitting, watching, listening, smelling. He is. Still from far he notices the never ending sound of civilization, humming cars on the highway on his right, engines howling in the close village to his left, a train passes somewhere in the distance.

Within few minutes the birds hushed, what remains is only the cracking of dead branches and sounds of small animals everywhere around. Slowly he comes back to reality, he needs to find his way out now, back to civilization. 

As he is very familiar with this part of the forest it’s not a big challenge, though darkness transformes shapes. But there is the woodhouse, built by kids from fallen wood, here is the corner with the skewed bench, where he enjoyed the evening sun a few days back. And this dark shadowmust be the big tree, another landmark well known to him from his forest runs.

The bright evening star Venus guides him, he now follows the path where he can already see the civilization light at the end, the bright lamps giving light in the streets and the milder, cosy lights shining from the windows. 

People everywhere, all doing their evening routine but very few outside like him. Greybeard enjoys his solitude, feels walls radiating warmth of the day, he slightly increases his pace when now walking again on solid ground. 

Reaching the Main Street he is almost surprised to see nothing changed much, though he feels the last four weeks were like eternity. He spots outdated advertisement of cancelled events, notices of training „now available online“ and cars covered with dust, there was no need to move them since weeks.

Still no people around, he takes his steps home.

This excursion leaves his mind refreshed, night and darkness are his friends, he enjoys seeing all the common things at their usual places, though life has become so different within a few weeks. He inhales the cold air with deep strokes, happy to be alive.