Darkness

When I was a young lad I was quite afraid of the dark.  Being told there was nothing there in the dark that was not there in the light accomplished nothing at all when it come to easing my fears.  I hated the night and I hated the darkness.  In my young mind there could be anything there and I'd never see it until it "got me".

This fear of the dark lasted until I was in my mid teens.  We moved back to Nat's Creek when I was thirteen so my mother could help take care of my grandfather.  I had a twenty one mile school bus ride to and from school and when the winter came I had to be at the bus stop well before daylight.  The bus stop was about a quarter to a half mile from my house up a lonely, dirt road and the place I had to wait for the bus was next to the hill where an large, old graveyard was.

It was not too bad for the first couple of years as my cousin Helen (who lived farther down the creek) would be there with me.  But, her family moved to another part of the creek and that left me to take that long walk alone and stand there in the dark by the graveyard waiting for the bus.  It was not a lot of fun.  For a while at least.

But, by the time I graduated from High School my attitude toward darkness had changed completely.  Then, as now, I came to love the darkness.  I found then and find now a peace in the darkness that is not there in the light.    Darkness comforts me.  I wish I did not live in (or near) a city.  I wish I could see the stars in the night without them being dimmed by the ambient light that tries to  hide their glory.  Back in Kentucky there was very little artificial light at night and the stars were so glorious.  I would always find Orion's Belt.  Those three stars so closely aligned fascinated me.  I guess they still would should I get out much at night and not live where there is so much light one cannot get a good look at the heavens.

I find it interesting the three great pyramids on the Giza Plateau in Egypt are aligned in a perfect mirror of the stars in Orion's Belt.  I wonder what they thought of the stars when they looked at the night sky over the desert?