The Shadow of Nightfall

I like to go for a walk, just as darkness takes over the sky.

My friends say, "Aren't you afraid. being out there by yourself? You're in a MetroPark, 12 miles from the center of Chicago with just your big dog (and .45 hollow points)?" There are a lot more things in this world to be afraid of, and in the last few years that's on my mind more than a walk in the woods.

Maybe I worry too much about the terror threat around the world when I'm not at work. I dated a guy before 9-11 that thought Afghanistan was in South America and said "if it doesn't affect me directly I don't care". Some of my peers say the terrorist danger is simply a political mechanism to distract us from what is really wrong with the country. But the threat is real, and while we sit cozy in our little homes, the world is spinning outside of our control, on its axis of turmoil. Finding my biological family recently opened up my eyes to a world unlike the one I was raised in.  I'm mostly Scot on my mothers side but on my father's side I'm  Hungarian Ashkenazi Jew, a population almost completely decimated in the death camps during World War II.

My overall odds of just being here are beyond small. And I've survived this far because I remain aware of these things. I've survived landing a crippled jet, I've survived a abdominal septic shock 2 and a half years ago, from a 1 inch wound that couldn't see anything but a virtual doctor during Covid, an infection that has a mortality rate of 72% (I am so glad they told me that AFTER I was out of ICU and unplugged from all the machines).  I'll probably survive airline food, taxes and heartbreak. I can survive because of emotion (which is from Latin emovere "to move away").

Erich Remarque described it flawlessly in All Quiet on the Western Front. "At the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected. It is not conscious; it is far quicker, much more sure, less fallible, than consciousness. One cannot explain it. A man is walking along without thought or heed - suddenly he throws himself down on the ground and the storm of fragments flies harmlessly over him - yet he cannot remember either to have heard the shell coming or to have thought of flinging himself down. But had he not abandoned himself to the impulse, he would now be dead. It is this other second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us".

As the bumper sticker says - s^&# does happen. There are things that are going to happen to us that we can't control. All we can control is how we react to them, whether we flee or fight. Carrier pilots are briefed on it. The briefings aren't as much about technical knowledge, if these men and women didn't have that they wouldn't be responsible for a armament laden, multi-million airplane with their name stenciled on the back of their chair. (Pez, Chaos, Spurt).

Though part of a pilots briefing is to remind them of important stuff they already know, the aviation equivalent of going to church, it's mainly to remind them that they are staring death in the face, that out there in the ever changing stream of a world in conflict, death swims in the water-like flow of the winds. Like a river, the sky can be be tranquil but it can just as easily be wild, with predators cruising it's currents and the distance back to the banks of your ship much further than it appears. They are told to respect that, for fate waits in those dark eddies under moss grey clouds.

I think about that each time my hands bring up the throttles. Even if no one is shooting at me, there's always a risk. As much as I love to fly, I have spent enough hours aloft to know that the heavens are a two edged blade, one of joy and one of violence, that can cut you clean from the sky without a moment's hesitation. I think about that now, alone and cold on the edge of a vast field of corn as a hawk dives down for a field mouse, his talons glinting in the last scrap of daylight. While I walk, others stay home and warm, basking in the illusion that they are safe on home soil. Maybe illusion is really all they have. But I know too well, and in especially these last  years, the self induced damage that living with an illusion can do.

I look out at the approaching dark span of space running off in all directions under a low, uncaring sky and realize how vulnerable I really am. The sun takes it's final bow to the west, the hawk steals away with his prey, a hoot owl calls, and I run back to the safety of my house. Quick enough to keep up with the shadow of nightfall, just fast enough to keep up with the spinning of the earth