01 March 2012

The journey at night



Driving home at night you see immense clouds piled up, illuminated by a hidden moon, and you think of alien planets; you think of places humans will never go. But if through some unimaginable process you stood on one of those planets, what would you feel, standing alone, looking up at a sky like that, as far from home as any human had ever ventured, impossibly far from anyone you knew, so far from anyone at all that the rest of your species might never have existed? Terror? Panic? Probably. But perhaps you might also feel an overwhelming joy, an ecstasy you could never have imagined until now, until this moment when you stand somewhere no one has ever stood, looking at an elegiac sky no one until now has ever seen, ready to explore a world where you have almost no idea what to expect. You hope to find something alive but have no idea what form it might take, nor even whether you’ll recognise it as a living thing. If the metaphor of being torn between conflicting emotions has any truth, you have already been dismembered.

Driving home at night you see eyes shining from the long grass clogging a roadside drain. Knowing the eyes belong to a cat, you slow down; you expect the cat to crouch and wait but know cats sometimes misjudge a car’s speed and dash for the security of their own territory. You relax as the car cruises past and the eyes wink out. Further along, a tiny hedgehog wanders on the road as if following some convoluted, invisible path; the little creature stops, runs a little way, turns, trots a little further, returns to the middle of the road. You slow down and pass carefully, hoping it survives the night yet torn by the knowledge that this beautiful little animal lives here at the expense of other lives with histories here that stretch back millennia. Yet you could not run it down and save those other lives. A year ago a hedgehog ran out in front of the car as you drove home one night and you’ve never forgotten the dreadful crunch as you crushed it. You could not deliberately run down an animal no matter how righteous the rationale. One death won’t matter to the population, but it matters to the individual.

Driving home at night you cannot hear the crickets singing in the dry grasses. You cannot hear the ruru calling from the dark inside the macrocarpas, nor the rustle of the poplar leaves shimmering in the moonlight. You hear only the rush of air, the sound of tyres on tarmac, the engine humming and the intermittent rattle of something loose in the boot. You know the night wind outside will feel cool but not cold, but you know this only because you’ve switched the heater off. The car smells slightly of chlorine from the swimming gear you used this afternoon but you imagine the night will smell like cow shit and silage because right now you’re driving past a dairy shed. When you drive somewhere, what you imagine is as important as what you sense.

You could drive forever on a night like this, driving in moonlight with wild clouds, with strange things slipping through the shadows and stranger things inhabiting the edges of your imagination. Your destination no longer matters because you have already arrived; here, driving home at night you are already at home.



Photo: In the fjords of southern Chile, December 2011.

Photos and original text © 2012 Pete McGregor

17 comments:

Tammie Lee said...

it was all a good read and a wonderful photograph.
this is what felt so great in the end:


You could drive forever on a night like this, driving in moonlight with wild clouds, with strange things slipping through the shadows and stranger things inhabiting the edges of your imagination. Your destination no longer matters because you have already arrived; here, driving home at night you are already at home.

Relatively Retiring said...

Wonderful - and I recognise that feeling of not needing to arrive home because you are already there.
BUT this has taken me back to driving in my younger days. Sadly, English roads are hardly ever like this now, and even sadder, there seem to be hardly any hedgehogs.

Tim Koppenhaver said...

Pete,
Excellent writing. I really liked the tone, message, and powerful ending to this essay.
Take care.
Tim

pohanginapete said...

Thank you, Tammie. Glad you enjoyed it :^)

RR, I'd heard about the rarity of hedgehogs over there now. Here they're common — most summer nights I'll see them on the road if I'm driving.

Tim, thanks — very pleased you appreciated it.

Zhoen said...

You put me in my car, Northern Michigan, as a young woman on my own for the first time. Learning to love the dark for the first time, releasing my fear, even as I was often lost on back roads.

pohanginapete said...

Zhoen, thank you. Getting lost can, in the right circumstances, be wonderful. Rebecca Solnit wrote a marvellous book about it: A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

Ruahines said...

Kia ora Pete,
Your words and images usually bring memories flooding back to me. This one puts me back in my first ever car and how we used to just drive out in the country to some little lake for the day, and drive back at night. I always enjoyed the night more for some reason. I feel like listening to Neil Young's "Long May You Run".
Cheers,
Robb

pohanginapete said...

Robb — pleased the post evokes good memories for you. I too prefer driving at night, when I'm the only car on the road (or close to it). A completely different story when I have to face a stream of oncoming headlights, though.

Don't Feed The Pixies said...

when i first learned to drive i used to like driving at night - the roads were much quieter and there was a certain poetry in the tunnel of light being carved into the darkness

I think now its a lot less enjoyable - far more cars, lots of light making it hard to judge distance - but that's clearly in a built up area

pohanginapete said...

Hungry pixie, it's still largely like that out here in the valley. But the traffic continues to increase — more people, more cars, more pressure. I look forward to the day when running a car's so expensive they become rare on the roads, but I'm not holding my breath.

The probligo said...

The big regret that I have is not to do with driving at night or day for that matter.

It is the speed with which the countryside flies past. I have a copy of the book with Crumpy's photographs and he talks of driving everywhere at 70k or less... usually to the great annoyance of everyone else.

I should learn to ignore the rest of the world, or adopt permanently the kind of time experienced in Niue or Samoa, and SLOW DOWN so that I can watch the daffodils pass by...

Leonie said...

I ran over a possum once. And hit a duck that was taking off slowly from the edge of the road directly on to the road. I don't think I'll ever forget those moments.

When I lived in Auckland, and couldn't sleep, I would get in my car and drive to the end of the motorway and back. And, after having a roughy day at work I would take the scenic route home.

There's something deeply relaxing and satisfying for me about driving; and I love your words on this that take me back to my own driving experiences.

pohanginapete said...

Probligo, I know what you mean. Years ago I was lucky enough to drive a long section of road in the north-west of the South Island; I'd started early in the morning and few other vehicles were on the road, so for an hour or more I was able to cruise along at about 70k. I saw so much more and had time to notice things in a way I simply couldn't have otherwise. A delight.

Leonie, I'm lucky — my usual route home happens to be the scenic route. Usually I find it relaxing in the way you describe, yet I do feel twinges of guilt about the driving. If I were closer to town I'd bike, but I'm not up to a 70k round trip in the rain and wind with a load of groceries. I'm seriously considering a motorbike, though.
    I fully agree with a former editor of The Ecologist who, speaking about hybrid and electric cars, said, "We don't need alternative cars, we need alternatives to cars."

Anonymous said...

"If you cannot bear the silence and the darkness, do not go there; if you dislike black night and yawning chasms, never make them your profession. If you fear the sound of water hurrying through crevices toward unknown and mysterious destinations, do not consider it. Seek out the sunshine. It is a simpler prescription. Avoid the darkness." Loren Eisely

This blog post made me think of Eiseley-Maureen

pohanginapete said...

Maureen, Eiseley understood the feeling very well indeed.

Lydia said...

Such a beautiful image and essay. It lulled me into memories of my night drives home after night classes in college in Reno, Nevada. My family lived 17 miles out of town so it was (in those days, not now) a lonely, country drive. I still love night driving, but it is scary with all the traffic...and I loathe those horrid halogen bluish headlights. Which is why it is lovely to remember drives past.....

pohanginapete said...

Thanks Lydia. I'm totally with you on the bluish headlights. I can't stand them; I find them distracting, glaring, detestable. Guess I'm old school.