WHITE BLUFF, Tenn. — I don’t remember ever being scared of the dark. If my mother were still alive perhaps she’d job my memory of times once I begged to go away the sunshine on at bedtime or came scurrying into my parents’ room, scared of monsters that lurked within the pitch-black corners of my very own .

The Light in Dark

But what I remember is standing on the rear seat of a Galaxy 500, searching the car window as my mother drives along unlit country roads. I stare, with a deep thrill I can’t name, at the black sky above then at the rushing road below, so briefly illuminated by the car’s taillights before it disappears into endless shadow.

I remember inhaling the cold of a moonless winter night as I stand, alone, on a hillside near our house. The lights of home are somewhere behind me, but ahead of me there’s nothing but a darkness so profound I can’t make certain where the sky meets the world . Joy stirs in me then falls away as I become lost to myself, one with everything.

I remember wandering within the woods as evening falls, the shadows growing and deepening between the trees, night filling up the planet . There’s an influence carried on this darkness — primal, living magic. I can feel it enter me. Anything is feasible .