Moon-Night

Juli was having a party. There were 30 people in the house and I needed to go to bed early for the next day's work. The right word really is need; this has been a season of such exertion that it seems to me no amount of rest will ever be enough. I was just preparing to leave the happy throng and go upstairs when...

"Hey, we're going for a walk!" It was Jack who told me. I didn't think; I didn't reason; I didn't even pause to consider. My whole heart leaped up into my throat and I cried "Oh, me too!" A moment before I had been unspeakably weary and dulled; now I flushed excited and breathless. I felt that if I did not get outside into the clean knife-sharp wind and blessedly cold air, I would die. I, who depend so much on the outdoors for sanity, had been penned up in buildings, typing away at keyboards, for nearly two months. I had not been on a walk in weeks, nor on a night walk in six or eight months.

"Come on, then!" said Jack. I tore upstairs and found my warmest cloak and scarf---I think my fingers were trembling while I put them on. Then out, oh!---out! The wind tore and howled, and I saw the moon, and I knew it would be a wild night, and that I was in a wild mood, and there was no help for it, and I was glad. I wanted to be wild; I felt I could not be quiet and patient and pensive for another second. If I have my caged-hawk moods (and I do), then this was the release that I sought. For one beautiful moment there was no cage. And for the first time in so many months, I had both spirit and recklessness enough to try my wings.

I ran and ran. I forgot that there were other people on the walk. I forgot that there are other people in the world. I wanted only to run until my body merged with the wind and the moon and the night in general. I felt that I could and must attain this. It was a brief freedom, but it was freedom. Then the demands of humanity broke in...

"Christy, where are you going?"
"Christy, come back! Don't run ahead!"
"What's wrong with her?"
"Stay with the group!"

Oh, it hurt, it was agony to turn back. I knew I must not be so reckless, that I must behave myself, think of others, and be patient. I tried. I would run ahead a little, then circle restlessly back. I picked out the trail for some of the others, helped them avoid puddles or fell into the puddles with them in our collective clumsiness. I threw sticks out of the way and stared at the moon. All the time I wanted only to be alone with the night. Let me go, let me run, let me---Then someone started in on my cloak...

"You look like an elf! You're like Legolas."
"Which Legolas?" I asked, tightly.
"Legolas in the movies."

The inevitable Lord of the Rings jokes. I hated my cloak for making me prey to them, though it was the warmest and best I had for night walking. Legolas! Not Legolas as he was in the books---that I might have appreciated---but as they made him in the movies! Oh, how I wished the movies had never been made! I wanted no part of Hollywood that night, nothing of the "glamour" of black cloaks and sweeping camera angles. I wanted only my good wool cloak warm and rough around me, and to be allowed to run in the moonlight without any references made to how "cool it looked."

I turned off into a path I knew, lost the main group, and ran in the dark silence for several minutes. But of course I could not remain alone. Suppose the others worried about me, or got lost themselves? I caught up with them. Then it grew easier, as I tamed myself and rebuked my selfishness. How thoughtless, how quick to take offense, and how unloving I had been! I fell into step and conversation, found someone who would talk only of the woods themselves, and of the fairies. Ah, I wished the fairies would speak to me that night. But they of my home woods are silent; they are still angry with me for having gone away so long.

It was all dim and piercingly cold betimes. The silver lay on everything, and when the moon escaped her bank of clouds she was astonishingly bright. At length we all stood on the highest hill and let the wind carve us. I felt scrubbed, empty, clean. And so cold. I thought of going to the Oakenhall nearby, but my gentler spirits and growing tiredness prevailed. I had been running too much for my already weak condition to bear easily, and it was too cold.

I listened to the others. They talked of this and that, of who is in and who is out, who writes well and who doesn't, whether romance is a fitting subject for literature. I smiled, but would not speak much. I wanted to be free of my life as a literary person for that magic night hour, and silence was my freedom. Marjorie and Tarrah circled the hilltop arm in arm. Marjorie was telling Tarrah the story of the Bible. The wind was very strong up there. Everybody grew colder every minute. Some of us lay on the ground to look at the stars. I stood; my eyes are so bad now that the stars are only gleams to me.

At length we returned. Again I fell into talk, pleasant talk about things that matter, nothing frivolous or unsuited to the pure deep quality of the night, nothing that insulted the midnight blue of the sky. At home I lay shivering under blankets for half an hour, unable to sleep, raw of throat and lung, cold-skinned and absolutely glorying in it. It was life and radiance to me to be so cold and clear-headed and empty.

I woke sore, but still clear. I lived in the good of that walk all the next day, and all today. I bless God over and over for this gift: the agony and the ecstacy of a frozen moonstruck night.