Lightless Days

Lightless days make nights feel everlasting and time becomes extinct. Time is now told simply by the completion of tasks that are essential for my survival. The only thing keeping me alive is a man-made fire in the wood stove that requires constant tending. Stepping outside to retrieve more wood, the darkness brings a feeling of absence into the world around me. “It has been what seems like a century since I last felt the warm rays of sun kiss my face… a century since I was a witness to everything the light touches”, I spoke to myself as I trekked through a blanket of blinding snow.

My sight casted upon what seemed like thousands of miles with no other signs of life. I am the only living organism in existence in this very moment in time. There’s no background noise, the silence echoed through my bones. My lonely mind considered if it would even matter to the rest of the world if I were to live on or die right there in a pile of snow. “Nobody would ever find me all the way out here, anyway” I thought. Depressive thoughts start within just a few days of life with no sun.

Warmth radiating from the bottoms of my feet was melting the snow under my shoes with each step. The melting footprints instantly froze into little sheets of ice. My footprint forever engraved into the snow until the sun finally returns. Then, the loneliness that had followed me for the past six weeks left my body and stopped me right in my tracks. The only objects that can be seen this time of year are those of which you can identify it’s silhouette. I spotted the outline of a Night Owl in the top of a tree just over the horizon.

Although I couldn’t see his eyes, I felt as though I had a glimpse right into his soul that began pouring wisdom into my half-empty glass. I wondered what he could see while being all the way up there, hundreds of feet up in an evergreen tree. “I bet if I could get up there, I could see the sun again!” as excitement sparked in my eyes. It dawned on me, the owl has to eat in order to live on to tomorrow, it’s because of him I don’t have rodents getting into my stocks of food. I’ve never met him before, and may never see him again, but he plays an essential role in regards to my own survival. Without each-other, we both may very well starve.

Much like me, he was up there all alone, bearing every obstacle nature had to throw at him. Still, he persisted on gracefully as he was intended with no regret. This was the life he was meant to live, just like I was meant to share this moment with him. A single owl out here in the middle of nowhere still playing his role to benefit the world around him. Never again did I wonder what value I had to the rest of the world. His perspective from up in that tree changed my entire life, forever. Quickly, I went from being the only one in my mind to one of many in the world around me.

I may be physically alone, but I will never be spiritually alone while living in nature. For even when I die, I will become one with the soil enriching the life of whatever grows here after me. The grass needs the soil just as much as the mouse needs the grass, just as much as the owl needs the mouse, just as much as I needed the owl. We are never alone, for we will forever be one with the Earth around us.