“I am always nighttime on the inside
barefoot and heretic”
– Deborah Landau
We are approaching the Winter Solstice when the days grow shorter and twilight happens in a small window that somehow creates a vague need to hurry home before dark. Twilight is at once scientific and supernatural, both measurable and ethereal. As a photographer I’ve spent many hours in twilight simply because the light is so juicy and continually changing.
Twilight is the illumination of the lower atmosphere when the sun is not directly visible because it is below the horizon. It’s produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere and illuminating the lower atmosphere, so the earth’s surface is neither completely lit nor completely dark.
You may be surprised to know that according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration there are three kinds of twilight defined by how far the sun is below the horizon: Civil twilight begins at sunset and ends when the geometric center of the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon. The brightest stars and planets can be seen, while the horizon and terrestrial objects can be discerned. Nautical twilight ends when the geometric center of the sun is 12 degrees below the horizon. The term refers to sailors being able to take reliable readings via well-known stars because the horizon is still visible, even under moonless conditions. In astronomical twilight the sun needs to be more than 18 degrees below the horizon. Then the sky illumination is so faint that most observers would regard the sky as fully dark, especially under urban or suburban light pollution. The horizon is not discernible and moderately faint stars or planets can be observed with the naked eye under a non-light polluted sky. Dusk is the moment at the very end of astronomical twilight, just before the minimum brightness of the night sky sets in or may be thought of as the darkest part of evening twilight. The collateral adjective for twilight is crepuscular, which is used to describe the behavior of animals that are most active during this period.
In the early 1970s Carlos Castenada’s books were widely read by my generation who were very interested in alternate realities and non-rational possibilities. Tales of Power (1974) was his fourth book written about his apprenticeship and mind-blowing adventures with a Mexican shaman. In the book is the observation that “The twilight is the crack between the worlds. It is the door to the unknown.” Now this is not something that can be proven but rather sensed or recognized – another way of seeing perhaps? Later, Castenada came under fire for his methodology and ethics, but still, there are cracks where things like liquid and light can creep in and around academic rigor. I’m surprised that I still remember this comment.
There are far more definitions and discussion about the metaphysical implications of twilight than there are scientific interpretations. The Twilight Zone is a popular metaphor for a “weird” place where two different ways of life or states of existence meet. That perception is largely based on Rod Serling’s popular television series that ran between 1959-1964. Writer Paul Keegan has a headier definitionof twilight: “Twilight is the world of what is unsaid or half-said, of shared obliquities between unnamed friends who appear at the edges of vision.”
Pamela Petro is an artist and writer who has been teaching in Wales where she learned that the Iron-Age Celts considered dusk to be the beginning of the day, the moment of greatest potential. “It was what they called a thin time, when seen and unseen worlds overlapped and became porous.” In a series of photographs about dusk Petro found, “Like ruins, like puzzles, dusk lets us in. It’s the planet’s original invitation to imagine.” “Darkness obscures and sunlight reveals, but dusk—that liminal moment in between—murmurs suggestions.”
(https://www.guernicamag.com/shedding-light/
Light pollution can be detrimental to a variety of different organisms. The lives of plants and animals, especially those which are nocturnal, are affected as their natural environment becomes subjected to unnatural change. Nocturnal animals can be harmed by light pollution because they are biologically evolved to be dependent on an environment with a certain number of hours of uninterrupted daytime and nighttime. The over-illumination of the night sky is affecting these organisms, especially birds. Coyotes group howl and group yip-howl more during the new moon, when it is darkest. Communication is necessary either to reduce trespassing from other packs, or to assemble packs to hunt larger prey during dark conditions. Skyglow could increase ambient illumination to eliminate this pattern in affected areas although I have faith that coyotes will adapt as they have done so many times before (Longcore & Rich:2004).
Metaphorically speaking twilight describes a period or state of obscurity, ambiguity, or gradual decline. In the western world it’s often used to describe “the elderly.” Many of us have lived lively in this gradually fading light for years, knowing full well that we’ll eventually die (but they didn’t say when). That makes twilight a pretty broad window between day and night. There’s nothing ominous or impending about it. Here’s a sweet commentary by Virginia Woolf on the twilight of life: “The compensation of growing old [is] that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained – at last! – the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, – the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light” (Mrs. Dalloway 1925)”
In her keynote address to the 2020 International Dark Sky Association Conference, Annette Lee, Ojibwe and D/Lakota, reminds us that our relationship with the dark sky is not new: “For tens of thousands of years, indigenous people have nurtured critical relationships with the stars, from keen observation and sustainable engineering to place-based ceremony, navigation, and celestial architecture. This legacy of our species – connection to the sky – is in critical danger. Indigenous communities and Indigenous knowledge systems have suffered great loss, but knowledge and knowledge keepers are still among us.” Annette Lee is an astrophysicist, artist, and Director of the Native Skywatchers research and programming initiative. This initiative seeks to remember and revitalize indigenous star and earth knowledge. She has over thirty years of experience in education as a teacher, program administrator, professional visual artist, and researcher. Currently she is an Associate Professor of Astronomy & Physics at St. Cloud State University.
Shorter days, of course, means longer nights. The indigenous Nisenan spent time with extended family and guests when storytelling took on an added importance as accounts, sagas, parables, comedic theater, cautionary tales and shaggy dog stories went on night after night, week after week, etc. We are, all of us, deeply grooved to respond to shared knowledge, experience and wisdom. This is when singing, dancing, gaming, training and wooing are undistractedly practiced.
Less well known are the practices of traditional Inuit communities, before electric lighting became the norm. In Make Prayers to the Raven (1983), Richard K. Nelson cites Inuit tribal elders who described how they dealt with the very long nights of winter. Faced with long wakeful hours in the dark, people crawled into their warm beds and listened to the recounting of stories. Most of the narratives happened in late fall and the first half of winter because they were taboo after the days began lengthening. After a story the teller finished by commenting that he or she had shortened the winter: “I thought that winter had just begun, but now I have chewed off part of it.”
Junichiro Tanizaki in his book, In Praise of Shadows (1933) argued that excessive illumination is the most atrocious assault on beauty in the West, a pathological tendency to turn something beneficial into something excessive. Today we’re more lit-up than he could ever have imagined.
In these times many urban and sub-urban people have never even tasted the dark. Instead, we live with indispensable, but nasty, little led lights everywhere indoors. We fear the dark – my new neighbors have added eight bright outside lights should there be a need to perform an emergency appendectomy outside. Why did they move to a foothill conifer forest where it’s dark by nature? Sometimes, while I’m luxuriating in the fading caress of twilight someone will walk into the room and abruptly flip on the overhead light switch while saying “it’s getting dark in here”, as if there is only dark and sitcom/gameshow lighting.
As far as I know, the town of Borrego Springs, in the Anza-Borrego desert, is the only International Dark Sky Community in California. Their goal is to organize the community to legally preserve the night sky through the implementation and enforcement of a quality outdoor lighting ordinance, dark sky education and citizen support of dark skies. Dark Sky Communities hope their efforts promote responsible lighting and dark sky stewardship and set good examples for surrounding communities. One look at a nighttime photograph of our hemisphere from space makes it obvious that setting a good example is not enough.
The darkest nights are overcast, when even starlight is not available – what poet Deborah Landau calls “immaculate middle-of-the-night quiet.” I’ve had the pleasure of making my way home from a friend’s place on such a night when it was so dark that I had to navigate the half-mile trail on the basis of its well-worn compaction and the absence of vegetation – a bit scary but also exhilarating. On other nights I’ve had the gift of cross-country skiing adventures in meadows and on ridges illuminated by starlight. The light of the full moon on snow is gorgeous and breathtaking – chattering ceases.
Nature writer Henry Beston disliked streetlights and other artificial illumination. In banishing the dark, he said, we’ve lost something essential. “For eons, the hours of darkness were a time for a different kind of thinking, a different way of being. Now unlit night is rare and difficult to access. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea. … Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? (The Outermost House:1928)
Longer nights can mean more time for preparing food undistracted. Try an afternoon minding dough, so fresh bread can be had at dinner. Long slow cooking in a crock not only fills the stomach, but the home with the aroma of good care and helps heat the house as well. Eating foods that have been canned or dried is a serious treat to be savored in this season of long nights.
I’m sure that this December you are finding yourself sleeping more (hard-driving ambition be dammed). Sleeping-in is not a guilty pleasure but a deliberate practice that guards against illness and ill-tempered weather at a time of year when the body (and soul) needs it the most. In Scandinavia, to cope with the long nights of winter, the Danish practice the hygge which means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people, while in Sweden they have a similar response with their mys. I had a Norwegian friend who claimed that, for most of the winter nights, her whole family shared a big bed with a down comforter.
Research has revealed that people living in urban areas of more than 500,000 people are exposed to night-time light levels that are three to six times brighter than people in small towns and rural areas. Those living in areas of more intense light sleep less, are more tired during the daytime, and report feeling more dissatisfied with their sleep. They also go to bed and wake up later than people in darker areas (Ohayon and Milesi:2016).
With the invention of gaslight and electric light, social and commercial life started to move indoors, with very few exceptions. Still, biologically we remain outdoor creatures in an indoor society. In fact, by settling indoors, our species has undergone a deliberate and artificial change of micro-climate that significantly exceeds the macro-climate change that is global warming. We are no longer results of biological evolution alone.
Normally, we are not aware of the strong haptic and embodied ingredients in our visual perceptions, but twilight reveals these forgotten sensibilities. Sight is activated and sharpened in twilight. The evolutionary process has tuned the human eye for twilight rather than bright daylight. Normal illumination levels today are so high that the full capacity of vision is suppressed as the pupil automatically closes. Paradoxically, our culture reveres vision and visibility, but at the same time it weakens the capacity of vision through the use of excessive light (Turrell:2016).
Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ is a song written by Sir Harry Lauden, of Scotland, in 1911. It’s a popular love song written about a man and his sweetheart courting at the end of day:
Roamin' in the gloamin' on the bonnie banks o' Clyde.
Roamin' in the gloamin' wae my lassie by my side.
When the sun has gone to rest,
That's the time we love the best.
O, it's lovely roamin' in the gloamin!
Some might say it’s a wee bit corny, but Lauden’s right about it being a lovely time to wander. It’s the time when you’re most likely to soak up the constant shading of hues and moods that, until this moment, you didn’t know existed. At the same time all the usual landmarks fade and lose their edges while our aesthetic zones gulp down the evanescent deliciousness remaining. It’s surprising to see how little light is required to find your way. Vineet Raj Kapoor, author, lyricist, poet and game designer, reminds us that, “Darkness doesn’t mean the path doesn’t exist.”
The gloaming is a word recognized by many people, but few have actually experienced it (especially when you eliminate the skyglow created by cities, stadiums and lighted roads). That the word is Scotch should come as no surprise because Scotland uses hundreds of words for what we might consider bad weather. Gloaming describes evening, twilight and dusk but there’s something about the word that sounds gloomy – not so much negatively but more melancholic. It’s first recorded in in the “Original Chronicle of Scotland” in the fifteenth-century texts with a reference to ‘the glomyng of the nycht’ found. Other Scotch words for outside conditions include “smirr” for a fine rain or drizzle, “drookit” to mean extremely wet or absolutely drenched, “oorlich” to describe situations damp, chilly and utterly unpleasant. “Stoating” is when it rains so heavily that the drops of rain bounce off the ground. (The Scotsman. 19th April 2016). It’s raining heavily as I write this and, after months of no rain, it’s delightful.
You may wonder what Scottish words have to do with my habitat, the Yuba River in the Sierra Nevada of California. Well, in 1850 Scotsman, Major William Downie led a party of Black men, a Kanaka and an Irish boy to a gold mining location just downstream from Goodyears Bar on the North Yuba River. This location was known as Rantedottler Bar, for which there are seven spellings but no known etymology. It’s not hard to imagine one of those Scotch words for troublesome weather being used here in 1850. Only a few weeks ago there was a drop of 50° overnight at Goodyears Bar. If, in the 1850s, you mined on this 20-mile stretch of the river winter weather was a serious concern in all languages spoken because the conifer coated canyon is narrow and the walls are steep, therefore there are only a few hours of direct sunlight available. What that means is that winter had an extra bit of bite for gold miners who worked in, and with, water every day they possibly could.
• • •
Some additional references:
Downie, William. Hunting for Gold. American West Publishing Company. 1971.
Lee, Annette. 2020. https://annettelee.com
Longcore, Travis & Catherine Rich. Ecological Light Pollution. 2004. www.frontiersinecology.org
Ohayon, Maurice M. & Cristina Milesi. Artificial Outdoor Nighttime Lights Associate with Altered Sleep Behavior in the American General Population. Sleep, Volume 39, Issue 6, June 2016. https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.5860
Petro, Pamela. Shedding Light. Guernica. November 2, 2020. https://www.guernicamag.com/shedding-light/
15 Words Which Can Only be Used to Describe Scottish Weather. The Scotsman – Edinburgh. 19th April 2016.
Turrell, James. The Thingness of Light. Daylight & Architecture. Autumn 2016, Issue 26. Autumn 2016
