Unbelievably Lucky...
It’s unimaginable that this nightjar had not been tracking me all this time, that he had not been fully aware of my intrusion, my intentions, my being, my doing, my scent, my sound.
Happy Sunday!
And a warm welcome from the Palace.
As the oil and water in the kernel are heated, they turn into steam. Under these conditions, the starch inside the kernel gelatinizes and softens. The steam pressure increases until the breaking point of the hull is reached; a pressure of approximately 930 kPa (135 psi) and a temperature of 180 °C (356 °F). The hull ruptures, causing a sudden drop in pressure inside the kernel and a corresponding rapid expansion of the steam, which expands the starch and proteins of the endosperm into airy foam. As the foam rapidly cools, the starch and protein polymers set into the familiar crispy puff.
Sometimes Wikipedia reads almost like poetry.
For those of you new around these parts, welcome 👋 My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor, cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel, Expeditions Manager at British Exploring Society, and Advanced Wilderness Therapeutic Guide in training.
Yes, that is too many hats.
In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I become fascinated by popcorn.
Known in the popcorn industry as ‘old maids’, [some] kernels fail to pop because they do not have enough moisture to create enough steam for an explosion.
Stay hydrated, everyone.
Unbelievably Lucky: Night Shift Part 1
On the night of 5-6 July, I took a walk.
Leaving my car in a small village at dusk, I walked up onto the highest plateau in the New Forest, and didn’t leave until dawn.
This story covers the opening phases of my trial of Night Shift, an intentionally designed, therapeutic journey through darkness. Next week, I will continue with the story of the last three phases.
Before leaving on this journey, I had no idea whether my idea would ‘work’ as a transformational therapeutic experience.
I have no such doubts now.
Phase 1: Crossing the Threshold
9pm. I weave my car between the last of the summer evening drinkers, overflow from the pub and scattered over the quiet roads around the village green.
I park the car and pull out my backpack, overloaded with the excess of snacks that I always pack for any travel occasion1 and I walked a mile down the gentle undulating road toward Franchises Wood.
Twilight silence settled around me as I walked. The village contained the summer evening human hubbub as if surrounded by a million invisible egg boxes. My shoes crunched supernaturally on the sandy road dust native to English country lanes.
A young man zwinged past me on an electric scooter, giving me a smile as he flew by. The future.
I turned into the wood. I wasn’t sure, at this point, what was happening or how I should feel. So I took a few photos of the day before it disappeared, and then found a fallen pine tree to sit on.
What now?
I turned on my meditation app and closed my eyes. By the time I awoke, night was closing in — and, with it, the forest spirits.
Phase 2: Exhilaration
I needn’t have wondered ‘what now?’ for too long. As I climbed the hill onto the heathland plateau, the wild met me halfway — first in shadow, then in sound.
That is a nightjar. The sound is usually described as ‘chirring’.
Nightjars are extraordinary crepuscular creatures. The males’ chirring carries over improbable distances and I’d tracked this particular bird through the heath for a few hundred metres.
The audio you’re listening to was recorded lying flat out on the heather, arms outstretched to reach into the gorse bush where the nightjar sang.
Then the nightjar stopped; abruptly.
‘Damn,’ I thought. ‘I’ve spooked him.’
I lie there, as still as I can, lungs not even daring a breath.
But still nothing from the nightjar.
Then I hear a clumsy clack somewhere close behind me. I don’t let it distract me from my vigil. Until the second strange clacking — was that a wingflap?
I turn my head, ever so softly. And there, just over my shoulder, is the hovering silhouette of my friend the nightjar.
If you listen closely, you can imagine my intake of breath on the recording.
The moment reminds me of a passage in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.
Picture a man crouched at a bedroom door, eye to the keyhole, peeping on two lovers, wrapped in the sheets. The peeping Tom is completely absorbed in the scene, and his self-awareness has vanished, he is unconscious of his own contingent existence — he is apparently in control, the observer.
But then he hears a creak behind him: a footstep on the hallway floorboards. The man is snapped into a new reality and his self-awareness rushes back in: the observer is the observed, contingent on another.
As an urban human, I live my life in almost complete separation from nature. Nature is there as a backdrop to my activities, at best an unconscious entity passing through my world, to be recorded, pinned, identified for my amusement and diversion.
But this is not my playground, my habitat, my home. Of the two of us, the nightjar and I, how could I ever have assumed that I was the observer?
On reflection, it’s unimaginable that this nightjar had not been tracking me all this time, that he had not been fully aware of my intrusion, my intentions, my being, my doing, my scent, my sound, my glowing phone, my quiet breath.
Unlike Sartre’s peeping Tom, this sudden reversal doesn’t bring me shame. It brings wonder: the awe of encountering, as their inferior, a more-than-human consciousness.
With my awe, my smallness in the scene, any sense of superiority over nightjar has been swept away. The foundations of my whole human-centric epistemology are gone. Humans are not the main characters on planet earth. I am not the headline act.
Far from being the observer, apart from nature, I am indivisible from nature. I am concurrently observed and observer, equals in both. In truth, the nightjar tells me, being in the world is being in constant dialogue between self and other.
Even now, as I write these words at home by daylight, I am barely conscious of the birds in the sycamore outside my open window, but no matter — they are conscious of me.
The sycamore itself is no mere bystander. We are inextricably connected, exchanging gases in the kiss of life. Sycamore breathes out, David breathes in; David out, sycamore in.
The nightjar and I hang there together for one, two, three moments — me praying thankful in the gorse, he in the airspace, eyeballing me from three angles, passing on some sort of blessing, before skipping away into the night air.
Thank You
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As always, thank you for your eyeballs and thanks for your support.
diwyc,
dc:
Yesterday I took a full tupperware of curry and rice, a box of grapes, a box of strawberries, two bottles of protein shake, three snack bars, a five-pack of bagels, two goats cheese medallions, a cappuccino mousse, three bananas, and an egg and cress sandwich for a single train journey.