Evening Strolls

I love taking walks during different hours throughout all of the seasons, each time of day and time of the year’s cycle providing a completely different allure for my mind and my senses. Just after dusk at the cusp of fall and winter is probably one of my favorite times to begin a walk. Its during this time that I can be completely alone on a dark street without having it be too late to be stereotypically dangerous. I can meditatively settle down for the night and then still have the whole evening ahead of me when I arrive back home. I love glimpsing into windows, seeing families ease into their after-work routines as if it were a picture on display; their lives inside of their warm homes so brilliantly lit, framed by windowpanes and dark night air.

Daylight savings time is the perfect ingredient in the chilly nighttime walk. Once the clocks have been set back, evening hits much earlier. The insides of homes transform in ways that just aren't possible when its still light out. Its amazing how even one hour and a touch of cold weather can soften the home culture- people want to stay inside, families bunker down earlier, dinners switch from salads and take-out to slow-cooked, fragrant comfort foods that warm up and settle the soul after a cold day. Homeowners and renters alike are unknowingly seen through their windows moving about in their kitchens, equally unknowingly creating radiant smells of red meat, potatoes, onions, and garlic that drift out to the sidewalk for anyone to savor. The aura of the home cooked meal subtly lingers in the nippy, crisp evening air, enough to make even the most independent of vegetarian passers-by nostalgic for slow-cooked sit-down dinners with grandparents.

The cold, early evening has a way of making life quieter, too. The human sounds normally heard on the street retreat as the transformers’ buzz, the animals’ scurry in the bushes, and sounds of the night bugs begin to play a soft background soundtrack to the rhythm of my shoes against the sidewalk. My thoughts hush and my mind lingers in tranquility, relaxing and taking in life, just as an old man might as he sits on the porch for hours in his rocking chair- content simply watching and being as life happens all around him.

As the moon moves higher in the sky and more stars appear, drapes close, and lights turn off, though life continues to happen all around. Among it, content, simply watching and being, I walk.