This morning I was up and out the door at 4 am. For much of the past year, this has been my practice, regardless of what time I wake. I get up and immediately go outside, before turning on the lights. I want to be able to see as well as I can, as well as any human can, in the dark. I want to see the stars in their brilliance. I greet the day, the Sky, the Trees, the dew, the grass.

I began this practice, which has become a spiritual practice, as a way to face my fear of the dark. There was a while after my mother’s death in 1995 that I had to sleep with a light on. I don’t know how long that lasted. (Years.) Was that when my fear of the outside darkness began? Maybe someday I’ll know.

When I was a kid, I’d walk the half mile down this dark road all by myself on winter nights. I’d be on my way to 4H. My friends and their parents would pick me up at the end of the road. Daddy was busy in the barn, and Mom had a gaggle of other kids to look after. I suppose my ride would have come all the way up to get me, but I wanted to walk with Orion, my favourite constellation, good friend and companion. I wasn’t afraid, except when I’d see the tree stump that looked like a bear. But I knew it wasn’t a bear, and besides, Orion the Hunter was with me.

I remember when they turned on the lights of Mactaquac dam. I think I was ten. The night has not been dark, really dark, since then. The Milky Way is not as bright as it used to be, but now, I can’t blame it all on the dam. The lights of Fredericton brighten the sky to the east, and house after house has a dusk to dawn light. When I was a kid, I resented the one dusk to dawn light between the corner store and home. After I’d walk past that one light, the road seemed extra dark for a while.

I miss walking at night. I miss my time with the stars. Yet on the rare occasions I do walk the road at night, I hurry to get home before something notices me out there. My early morning practice is helping. Being outside in the dark, in my yard, at least, isn’t as scary anymore. (One night, watching for falling stars, I did startle a skunk who ventured to within a few feet of me. Skunk scurried away. I was not a threat.)

When I’m away from home, and getting outside isn’t as easy, my morning doesn’t feel quite right. I need that time, even a minute or two, to connect with the Wild. I feel for those humans whose entire outdoor experience is the short walk from the house to the car. When the car is also indoors, there’s barely a need to set foot on soil.

I’ve never been on a motorbike, but I’ve been told that the joy of it is being able to smell and hear and experience the world without being encased in metal. Why do we need to be encased? Why do we try to squeeze our spiritual lives into boxes with bells and pews? What if we are being called to go outside, even outside in the dark? What if we are being called to a new pilgrimage, to follow a new road, even if it is dark and unfamiliar.

Perhaps it isn’t a new road at all. Perhaps it’s an ancient road, lost or forgotten. People have been forgetting the way for millennia. Somewhere around 600 BC, an ancient wise one wrote: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16, NIV).

I had a dream once, about a fork in a road. In the dream, people had the choice of whether to take the easy road, flat along the river, or to climb the hill. I chose the hill.

Robert Frost, in his poem, The Road Not Taken, wrote about how “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” He “took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference,” he said. Both roads in his poem were covered with autumn leaves, just like the paths I’ve walked these last few days. It makes it hard to tell which way is the path, and which way is just another way. Robert Frost had to choose, knowing that he would likely not be back to walk the other road. Nothing in the poem suggests judgement of one way over another, just choice.

I don’t think it is quite the same with the crossroad humanity is facing now. Our two paths are diverging to such an extent that it sometimes seems like we are not even living in the same world together. Much of what we thought was solid and long lasting is crumbling. The path is obscure, and we are afraid. We know we will not likely be able to come back later to walk the other road, if we choose unwisely.

Jeremiah said to look for the ancient path. If we do, we will find rest for our souls, he wrote. What path will we choose as a people? Our individual choices are part of how we, as a whole, make the larger choice. So this morning, at 4 am, I went out into the Dark Wild. There was enough light to see, even before the sliver of crescent moon rose in the east. I listened in the quiet to a distant owl. Sometimes I hear a deer. Sometimes coyotes. They too are spending time in the dark, with Creator, with Spirit, with Orion, and with the late September breeze.