It is dark as I begin.
I am an owl, a night owl,
so this early morning darkness
feels strange to my skin.
Yet it invites discovery.
I sense a secret,
waiting to be unwrapped.
I gently close my lodge-room door,
walk down the lighted hallway,
the one on the outside
of the building,
searching the downward pathways,
the ones that take me past the art studio,
the gallery,
the large covered pergola,
the tennis courts.
I am hunting the jogging track.
One quarter mile,
circling through the brush,
winding a bit,
decorated with deer scat,
yet carefully tended and groomed.
Like everything else in this place,
a welcoming thing.
Slowly, the morning sun
makes itself known,
and as I reach the halfway
point of round four,
I stop for a moment
on a bench, perfectly placed.
The darkness is fully rent now,
no more flash required,
that flash on my small pocket camera,
the one that bounced back
at me,
reflecting only
trunks and branches.
Now I can see through them
to the river below,
almost out of sight,
down the grade.
The river that flows easily,
gracefully,
gently.
It does so in the light,
but also,
it does so in the dark.
In the feeble, clouded light of day,
I can see the path itself,
all of it - the edges,
the surroundings,
the general direction of things.
And somehow,
it feels more real,
more solid,
more purposeful.
Yet nothing has changed.
The river,
the path,
the trees -
all of them are there
in the light and in the dark.
But sometimes it takes being in the dark
to fully appreciate the light.
Sometimes what seems hidden
in the dark
is not really hidden at all,
only veiled beauty, waiting
to shimmer in the light of day.
And sometimes we have to walk
the path when we're not sure
where it is,
much less where it's going.
