Curious about the Movements in the Night

"To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight,and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."---Wendell Berry

Something visited the coops during the night.  Evidence of determined digging shows itself outside the door and along the side of two of the coops.  Whatever it was made little progress, whether due to concluded futility, weariness, or distraction I cannot say.  The activity does not overly worry me.  Even if the critter had succeeded in its tunneling, it only would have entered the run.  The birds, quietly nesting in the chamber above, were safely secured behind a protective door, wedged immovably closed behind the raised ramp.  The visitor would have been sorely disappointed for all its efforts.

So, it isn't worry that gives me pause, but curiosity.  What was it?

The likeliest culprit is a raccoon.  They are certainly common in the area, have visited and reconnoitered the coops before, and tend to be persistent.  But it could, as well, have been an opossum - more than one of which has found its way into the occasional live traps I set when their attentions grow bothersome.  Neither is a skunk beyond the realm of possibility, though I hope that isn't the case.  I could do without that olfactory complication.  And these in no way exhaust the possibilities.

Closer inspection might reveal subtler clues - a paw print, perhaps, or the scratch trail of a toenail.  Even without actually releasing, surely a skunk would leave behind some trace of its scent.  Lack of damage to the fence suggests that the visitor was either agile enough to leap over, or small enough to scoot under - this latter, it seems to me, likelier than the former.  Deer have never shown the least bit of interest in the chickens, and though wildcats and coyotes could almost surely clear the four-foot barrier, I've not been aware of such interest in the past.

And so here I am, surprisingly fascinated.  I could set up a light, but that rather reminds me of the old joke about the man looking under a street light for his lost keys.  When asked by a passerby if the man had lost them in this area the searcher replied, "no but this where the light is."  I could, then, set up a light, but that would only stake out the location where the visitor would absolutely not be.  Alternatively, I could set up an infrared wildlife camera, but that would necessitate me buying one - precisely the kind of investment in which I am more and more disinterested.  Or I could make occasional forays with a flashlight, almost surely scaring away anything of interest.  That, and as Berry notes in the poem, to go into the dark with a light is to only know the light.

If I truly want to meet my guest, I will need to heed the rest of Berry's poetic advice:  I will need to go dark in order to know the dark and the dark feet and wings that inhabit it.

Which, of course, is scarily vulnerable.  Risky, even.  I may not like what I find, or be safe in its presence.  Or get sprayed in the process.

But it could, just as well, be something quite wondrous - something I have never seen, and know nothing about, but that, knowing, could enlarge me.

Like so much about this sequestered time in which the lights are off in every existential way.  We hear scratching around our psychic and emotional periphery, and are aware that things are happening, but the ambiguity, the unfamiliarity - the great veil of blindness and unknowing - keep us paralyzed, and afraid; "inside" in more ways than one.

I wonder what it would mean to explore the darkness of this new time - in the dark - instead of retreating from it, grappling for any light that might be within reach.  I'm not talking about venturing out among the infection; I'm wondering about venturing out into the unknown created by the virus - the solitude, the different constancy of family time, the more limited availability of goods and distractions and options; navigating within new constraints, testing heretofore unseen capacities and sampling untapped resourcefulness.  As long as we confine ourselves to the lighted spaces, we will only know what we have known.

Something has been scratching around out there in the darkness - digging, exploring, sniffing.  Once upon a time I would have panicked.

Now, in more ways than one, I'm curious about what's out there...

...in the dark.