Unless the Mayans were right (instead of just fed up with hacking away at big round stones) tomorrow-December 21-will be Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere: The darkest day of the year.
We know a thing or two about dark.
One evening while we were living in Puerto Rico, we took a canoe trip to a bio-luminescent bay-luminescent’ meaning ‘all lit up’ and ‘bio’ meaning ‘a class you will fail if you don’t make at least one appearance during the semester.’ Everything I really needed to know I learned in detention.
Now, the best way to experience a bio-luminescent bay is to go on a moonless night. It’s also advisable to take a guide, but when we rented our boat all of the ‘guides’ said, “No. Is too dark,” which of course led me to question their grasp of the finer points of supply-side economics-namely, ‘if you don’t supply a guide, you won’t have much in the way of economics.’
Without a guide, normal, rational people would have gone home, which of course means we decided to go to the bay on our own.
To get to the bay, however, we had to paddle down a winding tributary that was covered on both sides with mangroves; these also formed a thick canopy above us. Between the absence of moon and the presence of mangroves, it was insanely dark. Super, graduate-level, don’t-try-this-at-home-kids dark.
Fortunately, friends had recommended we bring a powerful flashlight, and contrary to our basic natures, we took their advice.
So there were the six of us: John manned the oars, the older kids took turns sitting in the bow (‘front’ or ‘scary spot’) and holding the flashlight, and I navigated.
We have since learned that things go better when I drive and John navigates.
My job was essentially to say, “Go left, you know, a teeny bit,” and other complicated nautical stuff you landlubbers wouldn’t understand. And I was really good at it, in a retroactive sort of way. A typical exchange went something like this:
John: “Hey, Lyla, shine the light over there.”
Lyla: “Why? We’re just going to die out here anyway.”
John: “Nate, please relieve Lyla of her flashlight duties and lock her in the brig.”
Lyla: “I hate family outings.”
Me: “Honey, I think there’s something …”
Canoe: “Crash, wobble, tip.”
Me: “Yep. That was a sunken boat or perhaps a crocodile. Probably shouldn’t have run over it.”
John: “Assorted recriminations against the navigator.”
And then we’d do it all again, three feet later.
This went on for … hang on, I’m trying to remember how it felt … yes, this went on for six years as we bumped and splashed our way through the dark, stifling tunnel of mangroves. Kids were bawling, I was swearing, and John was paddling with the bloody-minded determination that has possessed husbands and fathers for millennia, the sort that says, “We’ll have fun, even if it kills every last one of you.”
Just when we were at the end of our tether, certain we’d taken a wrong turn and were now rowing down the river Styx, the mangroves disappeared behind us and we emerged into the bay.
That’s when things got worse.
At first, it seemed like the flashlight had gone out. We discovered that it was still working by means of the scientific method of staring directly at the bulb, but without the trees bouncing light onto the water and back to us, we were left in complete darkness. We always knew the flashlight was all that made the trip possible in the first place; now that the light was dimmed to near uselessness we understood how vulnerable we really were.
But what could we do at that point? Turning back wasn’t an option. And besides, we’d been assuredthat everything would be all right,by folks who had been there before. These were the same friends who displayed a sampler in their home that said, “If you’re going to be dumb, you’d better be tough,” but we attributed that to their kids’ tendencies to use pogo sticks to jump off the roof. So, trusting that the parents at least were trustworthy and un-devoured by sea monsters, we paddled on.
A few strokes into the bay, beyond which the black expanse of the Atlantic Ocean stretched forever, a strange and beautiful thing happened. The water all around the canoe filled with thousands of tiny lights. The light clung to the oars and trailed behind us.
The kids dipped their hands into the water, thrilled with how the light traced each finger. Finally, Blaire the Brave and John the Forgiving dove into the bay, leaving the rest of us awestruck at how we could make out their bodies perfectly, even in the dark, moonless night.
The water was filled with micro-organisms that, when touched, would light up briefly-apparently as a means of protecting themselves. Once we knew what to look for, we could see fish, and the movement of water plants, deep at the bottom of the bay. Sometimes it was a flash, sometimes a soft glow.
I’ve never seen anything like it, before or since. It was pure magic.
One light got us through the mangrove tunnel, and while it took a few moments of darkness when we just had to keep moving, it wasn’t long until we could see for ourselves that the light was all around us.
In the deepest, darkest places, everything, everywhere we touched, there was light.
