Last night I took my laptop out to the back porch to write while the sun set behind me. My porch overlooks a dairy farm in the Appalachian foothills. In the distance, past the twinkling lights of the highway and a 24-hour facotry, blue moutnain peaks meld with the darkening sky. The corn is knee-high, a soft green blanket that ripples in the wind. In front of this is the garden I share with our neighbors, full of plants beginning to bear summer's bounty and raspberry bushes yielding their first taste of sweet, black berries. Among all of this, fireflies danced like fairies in a magic cirlce. I could almost hear the sound of pipes and nymphs, dryad and fauns from C.S. Lewis' Narnia dancing in the grass. But it is really the hangle of my cat's collar as she chases grashoppers and moths.
Many people enjoy the day, when the sun in high and bright. They go out and play baseball or soccer, go swimming or have a picnic. Others prefer to party late into the night and through the early hours of the morning. But my favorite time is the dusk and dawn, the time in-between, when the shadows are long and the bridsong is full. Most people are inside, getting ready for bed or waking to face a new day. The world is empty, quiet, ready for anything.
Nothing is more soothing to the soul than the magic of the in-between times, dusk and dawn.
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