"I have been one aquainted with the night
I have walked out in the rain and back in the rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light."
~Robert Frost

I have certainly outwalked the city lights in life. My home at night is deep in darkness - planted like a tiny seed in the black sky. I can watch, as we did last night, every drop of light fade slowly in the evening, until we were left with just the sky and stars. I could imagine the stars as tiny, far off yurts, glowing welcome to us through huge expanses of space, until there were too many and they became themselves again: the individual stars and the collections that make Orion, the bears, the lion, and those I still don't know.

The night is friendlier in the darkness of the woods. Friendlier outside the lights of the city. In our apartment I felt need to keep the night out, to fill our rooms with lights and sound, but out here, there are nights we use no lights at all - the darkness is softer, and we can wrap ourselves in it, and belong there, with the calling birds, the coyotes, and the peeping frogs who chorus up from the stream.

I have become so much aquainted with the night - watching the moon wax and wane above the yurt, watching the stars switch places on the sky. But the aquaintance doesn't keep away all fear - walking alone down the road in cloudy darkness is a lonely path and the rustling of last year's beech leaves, dead on the branch, becomes an unfriendly sound. Strange the difference stars make when walking out at night.