“LOOK FOR SHOOTING stars,” I texted my daughter who was working nights last August. After getting home around 3 a.m., she and her friend watched the annual Perseid meteor shower from our yard in rural Georgia. They saw a few faint streaks in the sky but nothing spectacular. Her friend was bleary-eyed and ready to go in, but Zora kept her eyes on the horizon. Then it happened: A streak of white with a smoky blue tail hurtled through the sky and took their breath away. Several years ago, my husband saw a similar meteor, one that lasted long enough for him to proclaim throughout its sparkly display, “Holy smoke!!!”
Meteor showers are not the only luminous rewards for those who walk in darkness. Leigh Ann Henion’s new book Night Magic (Algonquin Books) serves as both guide and advocate for honing our night vision and waiting long enough to be surprised. Synchronous fireflies, luminescent glowworms, and fragrant night-blooming flowers are among the many wonders illuminating Henion’s Appalachian nocturnal habitat.
As a species, we are losing our access to darkness. Blue lights from screens disturb our sleep patterns. LED lights lower power costs but have led to an increased intensity and proliferation of unnatural lighting that disrupts migratory patterns of both songbirds and salamanders and makes it hard for owls to find nesting places. Weaving scientific data with personal stories of ranger-led night hikes and forays into the woods near her house, Henion urges us to fall in love with the darkness, not fear it. After all, it may save us.
Night Magic is not a religious book, but it sparkles with awe-inspiring language. Henion urges humans to regard unadulterated darkness, and the species that thrive therein (humans included), as sacred. At events like Mothapalooza in Ohio and Bat Blitz in Alabama, Henion meets enthusiastic congregants fawning over caterpillars and pollinators with an evangelical zeal. Learning to overcome her fear of bats, Henion calls for a “renaissance of reverence ... an intermingling of love and respect” toward creatures we have been conditioned to fear.
Henion invites readers to delight in life that sometimes is stranger than fiction. Spotted salamanders, with algae in their cells, can photosynthesize even though they spend most of their lives in the dark. The largest known organism on earth, an 8,500-year-old mushroom in Oregon known as The Humongous Fungus, “glows, producing subterranean light for miles.” Recent scientific research makes ancient Bible verses like “Walk in the light” (1 John 1:7) and “even the darkness will not be dark to you” (Psalm 139:12) take on new meaning. It turns out the night is full of multiple sources of wondrous light, if we would just attune our eyes to the beauty of the dark.
Josina Guess is a Sojourners associate editor and a contributor to Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic.
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