A Mid-Summer Nights Drive

Last night I drove around the area searching for any sign of storm damage that my Sony camera would be able to pick up in the light the moon and my frezzi would produce in the backwoods of West Virginia. We received several emails about storm damage along White's Creek so I decided to drive the road from one end to the other to see if there was anything that I could point my lens toward and capture on tape. As far as video goes the trip was a bust, but the drive was pleasant enough and it will surely help me later in the event I need to find my way around that specific area.

The drive afforded me time to reflect on how delightfully strange my region of the United States is. Here I was in what one might see as a back-country road. A place where only farm houses should be placed. Yet I found small communities placed along the road with little businesses among the smattering of houses. I know this element of the country-side isn't something of a shocker, little roads offer up little communities all over this great land of ours. Yet it was a reminder to me of how people chose to live, where to live, and what to surround themselves with.

It was a strange little voyage of almost mystic qualities for me as I drove the small two-lane road winding through the hills. My headlights drifted in and out of fog that settled in various regions of the countryside I was travelling through. Deer and other wildlife watched my passage from the underbrush beside the road. A skunk threatened me as I drove by, its hind-end facing me and tail raised. Luckily, I escaped with my scent intact.

It is a whole other world in the late hours, city and country-wise. A different breed of human beings and animals occupy the darkness. The contrast is more profound between the light and the dark, and the gray seems to be an ever present being even if it is unseen. Like the fog, everything; people, animals, and thoughts float in and out of existence like a silky sheet caught in a summer breeze. Maybe this is why I like the night shift. The fluid world that flows in the darker shades of life, where it is just as easy to lose yourself as it is for you to lose someone in the blackness. The time predetermined for secrecy and mystery. A time reserved for lovers, thieves, and assassins.

I, the constant observer that I try to be, watch as the night and the beings that belong to it pass through the gray. I, feeling detached and a sense of belonging, pass through the same gray and feel the same electrical draw that keeps the others tethered to this realm. I am a man of two worlds. I can walk in the daylight, but prefer the night. I can hide with the mysteries of the Moon or expose the secrets to the Sun. I am the human condition....

Or am I am suffering from emotional, mental, and physical fatigue.