The Child in the Night

[a true story]

Once when I was young and nervous, just seeing the length of the climb towards a self that is formed to the heart's true desire, I was walking alone in the pitch black of the woods at night. Think me not some sharp creature, heaving fearlessly in the mystery, or a gentle wanderer stepping in the deepness without care, or some lost searcher who cannot see that they cannot see. I was none of those things. I simply stumbled upon solace while moving forward through the jet dark of the void.

It was the cusp of fall on the summer side and far off into the thickly floral countryside and forests of the Carolinas. It was my first music festival, a sorry little affair with about eighty people and a ten foot stage in a hollow among great pines freshly hewn on a young drunk’s land newly inherited from his dead father. The people there were mostly country folk, taking and molding the experience to their liking easily. When my band played it was the only moment it rained, and we didn’t sound very good.

The night after we played and deep on in the forest away from the people I clicked off my light and walked back from my vehicle to the proceedings along the lonely path, a fresh slaughter of trees, their young nubs and old stumps marring my passing. I was planning to leave the event, and had been discussing the idea with my mother out in the parking lot where my cellphone’s little array of internal antennas could catch and release radio waves. For some reason I couldn't imagine sleeping in that forest. I had been there, met people, played music, and had a good time. But to spend the night, to give that last thing to the darkness and the gathering, I couldn't do. There was pleasure, surely but it sprung up and burned away uncontrolled, revealing a trapped animal. For, to sleep there was to relax into myself, to give up the nervousness and the fear. And in that moment, there was not yet enough of me to relax into. Thus I walked back in the dark paths to the fire where the people gathered, the tall flame a hazy point revealed at chaotic intervals as it peaked over the black hills in my going.

When passing in a dark forest with no light, one must control ones step right at the edge of both the obeisance to randomness and the rejection of it. One must choose to step, each step, into the unknown with a certainty of the act that moves beyond the bounds of the self, that makes the ground and the world and the foot facets of the same thing. For how else is it possible to briskly walk in the dark without error than for all things to be quietly connected? Or rather, for you to make them so. I'll tell you truly that to get from place to place while walking through the darkness without a light, only calm confident steps will suffice.

It was in this revelry of the magic of my stride, and the strange shame of letting my fear compel me to leave, that I found myself, each moment becoming more sure of the world, when my leg bumped something living near the earth. I turned back on my flashlight.

Looking at me, both of us out still four or five hundred feet from the fire that is the heart of so many human events, and from a stature of just a foot or two, was the face of a little girl.

Her visage is burned into my mind like a brand on the surface of the soul.

She was the world that needs saving, she was all good things about die. Her eyes were wide and wild, as if to survive she would have to regress into an animal. Her mouth was wide open and twisting upwards at the sides in a soundless toothless yell. Her hands were claws, gripping air. She screamed, staring up at the light, thinking her doom had finally come, and I have never seen such terror on another being’s face, than this little girl lost in the woods, so far from safety. Something changed, or rather I showed that thing that would win for me forever after for the first time and despite all my hesitance and fear and nervousness of the night, I picked up the infant without question, and held her in darkness as I went, more quickly now, more sure than maybe I had ever been, down to where the people were. Her screams quieted, or they might have become the sound of the world and I stopped hearing them as anything separate.

I do not remember returning her to her mother aside from that the woman was drunk and there was a quick flash of not wanting to give over the child. But, there are some battles we can win, and some we have no way to fight. You may rescue something precious only to find it will destroy itself once it is safe. It has always been this way.

Ever let me be that man, who walks in the dark to bring the hurt to the light and towards home. I saw him first that day, and many days after, though not enough, never enough. But alas, my friend, I have to tell you I still left that night. Though my heart wanted to stay, I left… and again and again I have left my heart behind, betraying myself, as we all do, imperfect selves.

There was, and is, a long wild road to the self formed to the true heart’s desire; and though its end may never be reached, walk it we should, and walk it we must.

The lost child awaits your rescue, and if you cannot brave the darkness she will die.