It’s brilliantly dark. Deep dark. Dark as dark can be. So dark it feels as if my headlamp can only illuminate a few steps in front of me. It’s almost as if I am underwater. Everything is dense and muted. Oddly enough, this lack of light means those things that are lit up are very visible. In this case, the thin slice of path in front me. There is no destination at this moment, nothing beyond forward anyway. The ominous quiet forces me to listen deeply, to every snap and rustle, every whisper of my body.
The tightness in my chest.
What is it telling me?
The lump in my throat.
What am I not saying?
Somehow, in the pitch dark, my shadows are illuminated.
Life has felt complicated recently. If I’m honest, I don’t feel like I want to or can trust anything. Like many stories I know by heart, this one lives only in my head. There is no visible truth to it and no discernible reason for it. It’s just a feeling that arrived and made my heart tender, my steps shaky.
Maybe I’m sick?
Maybe I’m stressed?
Maybe it’s menopause?
Maybe I’m overwhelmed?
I keep walking into the narrow beam of light on the bottom of the gully, following the soft glowing goldness, the only guide I have.
As I move, what I can only assume to be deeper into the valley, it becomes less about what I can’t see clearly and more about what I can. Without the abundance of daytime—buttercups, bounding rabbits, electric green—the undulations of the terrain are bare and beautiful, the small gray pebbles and the divots the moles have dug look impressive and sculptural. After an unknown distance, I realized that I’m not trying to look up or out from the valley anymore. I’m not hungry for the horizon the way I was when I started. I haven’t thought about what I’ll do with my day, what I should’ve done with yesterday. Right now, I’m in it—in this place, in this walk, in this whole world contained in a wisp of light. And it’s darkness, visual silence, showing me the way. I can see myself, the valley I inhabit and the valleys that inhabit me. My heart is a valley. My mind is a valley. I am both down deep and towering above.
Life has her own topography, ups and downs, valleys and peaks, tops and bottoms, vicissitudes, uncertainties, curiosities, and elements that are unpredictable. I am beginning to understand that. Suddenly, it's dark one day. Just as suddenly, a path is lit, we move forward, change begins. Perhaps the valley is a vault of opportunity? A place where secret treasure is buried, secret knowing, secret wisdom, secret enthusiasm, secret possibility, little gray pebbles, and mole holes.
Eventually, the sun comes in a burst. The wildflowers lift their heads and the birds begin to pull bugs from the dirt. It is beautiful, rich, vast, busy. But I’ll remember it clearest and best in the dark, with the silence, the secrets, the only light shining from me.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.