reply to Verlyn Klinkenborg Zero in the Dark

Dear Mr. Klinkenborg

I know the kind of brightness caused by moon on snow.  You call it phosphorescence which implies a kind of blue note in white. I don't see that. I see echoes of brightness edging white. I think the moon, especially in winter, holds a dialogue with the light. The light is a response, an answer to the moon's glowing face. Snow is the carelessly draped hostess, providing a place for the light. How’s that for fanciful? It’s a type of fancy common to the long Minnesota winters.

Yesterday, I took my dog, an always excited Cocker Spaniel, for a walk through the stark winter forest behind my house. I cut through my backyard which borders county park land. The land drops through bare Oaks and Maples interspersed with Buckthorn bushes.The sharp, curved thorns can still grab at my clothes. I pushed slowly down the first steep slope, following a deer trail down, noticing, the fresh deer piles and then, a series of circles where the thin snow cover had perhaps, been pawed away, to brown leaves. A herd of deer had been resting in this halfway spot: a kind of shelf on the sloping hill. I stood looking up, imagining the deer watching our family through the night lit windows at the back of our house. 

          The deer probably gave us little attention. I imagine establishing safety and curling correctly for warm sleep would be more important. Except when I let the dog, secured to a very long, very light rope, out onto the deck off the back of our house. His habit is to run down the steps and into the backyard. He must have known about the deer. I recall the annoying increase in time spent calling him reluctantly back from sniffing around the limit of his rope and the forest border. I assumed squirrels, his personal, constant, nimble persecutors who know the limits of his rope. The deer must also know he cannot reach them. Unless they came late, after we had gone to bed. Visitors, arriving late and leaving early.  

         As I write this, I have just come back from letting the dog out. I could see nothing, standing at the top of the deck and nothing, standing in the dark in the backyard. The dark, on this sliver of a moon night, doesn't allow for seeing much. And the cold, as you said, didn't make me want to stay out. Neither did knowing the deer could be there. I would rather imagine they are peaceful, sleeping, curled together in the leaves, feeling some safety being with their herd, hidden from us. So when I came inside, as you said, I brought the cold but also I brought the sense of my walls as wintering one group of sleepers while the forest winters another. One of the many benefits of bordering this tame form of nature, is remembering my place in the larger world. We all need safety, have family and know the same peace in sleep.