I must have forgotten what it was like. The dark, alone in the woods. Forgot that the dark isn't as dense in the middle of the path, the feeling when you can just tell that the foilage is thinner overhead than beside, and the inate sense of direction one devolops as learning to rely on other senses to travel through the night. The city has kept me too long. This I say, even as I spend my time in the country more beautiful than any other home I have ever known. Spoiled yet by the constant roar of the interstate 2 miles away. That sound, so focusable, so tedious, like the only thing you notice, and is not at all like the woods. The woods are constant as well, forever chirping, forever moving, alive unlike any interstate roar will ever come close to. I remember when it was this life that kept me connected, I was a part of this chaos, the chirping, the snapping of twigs, the waiting and watching looking for the darkness to shift. I was natural, I belonged. Now the interstate comforts me. I am connected, I have that undeniable sense of capable. Capable to move, go, get to, and definitely always leave. That comforts me now, the inscesant chirping of the dark alien to me. I have become like everyone else, comfortable in the light. Dependent upon it. No more, I am working in the dark now, I mean the real dark, where it isn't light within minutes drive. Here, when the artificial is extinguished the steep sides of the hollow block out all but the most intrusive stars and you find black. Black is where I will learn comfort again, for it is where I am from, and it is where I belong.
