There’s something to be said about the quiet hours of the morning, when you can listen to the soft sounds of a sleeping world. Behind me, as I type, I hear the click-click cat claws on little padded feet on the wood floor as they move around the darkened house, always comfortable in the darkness, going on about their feline business (“Is it time for breakfast yet?”); another cat snores softly in her little basket. Pretty amazing thing, a little cat snoring. I hear the low hum of the refrigerator that intrudes into the silence. So many of our appliances make noise, like the computer’s tiny fan, which sounds very loud at this hour and the clicking of a wall clock, marking time.
But best of all are the sounds outside. I walk out the back porch in the bitter cold of the pre-dawn, a breeze softly weaving through the oaks in the back yard, making soft, barely perceptible whooshing sounds through the leaves. As my eyes get accustomed to the darkness, I start to see details. A mild drip-drip of fog condensation from the eaves falls on the grass to my left and I can see it as well as hear it. I notice the absence of crickets, common in the summer months, but it is too cold for them today. I search for the sounds of bison, which some nights lay around the house, chewing their cuds, making soft but deep grunting noises to stay in touch with each other, a surround-sound quality spread out in the darkness. Not today. They are out there, but not close enough to hear. I search for the nearly inaudible whoosh of owls flying, their feather tips design to silence the sound as they approach and fall over unsuspecting prey. Not tonight either. It is eerily silent out there. One can almost hear the chill.
The absence of sounds makes my imagination soar. My brain searches through its sound files for those I’ve heard at night before. In Costa Rica, while carrying out studies in the forest, I spent many nights in the deep parts of the jungle, alone with my insect lights looking for new species of aquatic bugs. Those times are deeply recorded in my mind, the din of rushing water at my feet from a mountain stream; the sounds of myriad insects and other creatures rustling in the dark outside my small bubble of light, smells mixing with the sounds, creating complex imaginary creatures, scary and terrible because they were made out of our repressed fantasies, out of control thoughts, more like dreams than reality. Deprived of one sense, the others overcompensate, all creatively bathed by the imagination. Then, a real smell, the tang of large cat, a jaguar, moving silently through the forest, its scent powerful, bitter, deadly. He can probably see me, hear me and detect my own smell, sour to him, odor of potential prey. We are so close that the hairs of my neck stand up. I still can’t see anything; my eyes blinded by the lights can’t penetrate the darkness, a darkness that is like daylight to a night-hunting creature like a jaguar. I finally hear the growl, a low, unearthly sound, deep, sound waves that are almost physical, reverberating in my chest, but making deeper marks in my now barely contained panic-stricken mind. I realize I’m holding my breadth but can’t seem to move. I feel heat in my face as it warms up from the sudden flush of adrenaline to my blood. If that cat was hungry, I would have made an easy prey. I forgot about my machete sitting next to me in its sheath; I forgot about looking for protection, for a weapon to defend myself, to think about an escape route, to think at all. All I could do was stand there, like a deer in the headlights, paralyzed, held still by the galvanizing thought of a potential, sudden death at the paws and teeth of the largest predator in the Americas stalking me (or not) outside my line of vision. No matter that there has never been a single recorded attack of a jaguar to a human in Costa Rica in the last 100 years. Never mind that jaguars have been hunted and killed to near extinction, their habitats ravaged by greed and development. That day, that moment, that instant elongated by hypersensitivity into what seemed like minutes, hours even, was unique, precious, scary as hell, and REAL.
The jaguar moved on, perhaps never even stopped. Perhaps even never gave me a second thought, just another stinking little human, penetrating deep into his ancient territory, doing who-knows-what in a strange bubble of light. Better prey out there, better smelling and tasting.
Back on the back porch, I come back inside, to the warm house, shivering a little from the exposure. The dawn light is outlining the silhouette of the hills around the house at Middle Ranch. I start to make coffee, heat some water for my tea, take a shower, finish the work I started to do before I got distracted, and finally go to work.
There’s an almost surreal quality to half-baked thoughts so early in the morning. The sleepy mind plays trick on you, but it also brings with it gifts long forgotten, buried in the deep recesses of a mind overwhelmed with daily activity. There’s something to be said the quiet hours of the morning. I simply love them
Carlos
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