Starry summer nights

Starry summer nights

Photo by Corey Agopian on Unsplash

Originally published 23 June 1996

Child­hood has two sea­sons: antic­i­pa­tion and summer.

Or so it seems in mem­o­ry. And it is mem­o­ry, after all, that fil­ters what mat­ters in the long run.

Autumns, win­ters, and springs of child­hood blend in a murky rem­i­nis­cence of mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables, galosh­es, lunch box­es, Bryl-creemed hair, the prison-camp recre­ation ground of recess, chalk dust, star­ing list­less­ly out class­room win­dows, cal­en­dars and clocks, and antic­i­pat­ing with a bite of the lip the days and hours until the last bell rings and all of nature is released from laced-up servitude.

As school ends, the sun has reached its high­est place in the sky. The sol­stice, which means lit­er­al­ly “sun stands,” was Thurs­day night. As of now, the first offi­cial week­end of sum­mer, time stops and the cal­en­dar becomes irrel­e­vant. Shoes are dis­card­ed. Shorts replace trousers and skirts. Brush­es and combs are lost to the bot­toms of bureau draw­ers as hair goes tou­sled and free.

Sum­mer! Stick­ball in the mead­ows. Mess­ing about in drainage ditch­es. Long warm twi­lights on green lawns, catch­ing up fire­flies in our cupped hands, care­ful­ly trans­fer­ring them to clear glass jars in the hope that if only we catch enough we’ll have a use­ful lantern. The bril­liant sum­mer stars — Arc­turus, Vega, Deneb, Altair — com­ing on like street lamps, guid­ing us into sleep made fit­ful by the day’s unfin­ished projects, tomor­row’s beginnings.

The tip of the Earth­’s north­ern pole toward the sun push­es back our bed­time hour, advances the moment of dawn. Some­how, for me, the sieve of mem­o­ry brings the sum­mer nights into sharpest focus. The sounds of crick­ets, cicadas, and noc­tur­nal birds. Sleep­ing out under the stars and wak­ing in the still-warm night to find the Milky Way flow­ing from hori­zon to hori­zon like a cool stream. Yawn­ing, silent infini­ties observed alone from tan­gled blan­kets at the mid­night hour, exhil­a­rat­ing and a lit­tle frightening.

I’m sure that my mem­o­ries are rein­forced by that most mag­i­cal of chap­ters in Ken­neth Gra­hame’s The Wind in the Wil­lows called “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” I could­n’t say whether it was the sum­mer nights or the sto­ry that came first; they are inex­tri­ca­bly mixed in mem­o­ry. But half a cen­tu­ry on, the sto­ry keeps its hold on my imagination.

Mid­sum­mer eve. The sun has set. Mole and Rat push off in their boat to look for Port­ly, the infant otter, who has gone miss­ing from his home. They row upstream in moon­light. The night is full of ani­mal nois­es — song and chat­ter and rustling. Pur­ple looses­trife, mead­owsweet, and rose fringe the river’s banks, their odors per­vad­ing the still air. Mole and Rat pass the night in dreamy search­ing and silent rever­ie. Near dawn they hear a mag­i­cal pip­ing that draws them to an island in the stream, hemmed with wil­low, birch, and alder, cra­dled in a weir.

Here, in this holy place, here if any­where, sure­ly we shall find Him,” whis­pers Rat, and it is not only Port­ly that he means.

In a clear­ing on the island they find them­selves in an “august Pres­ence” — goat-hoofed, pipe-play­ing, great god Pan, friend and helper. And nes­tled between Pan’s hooves is the sleep­ing infant otter.

As the sun’s first rays shoot across the water-mead­ow, the Vision van­ish­es and the air is full of the car­ol­ing of birds that greet the dawn. With the sun comes for­get­ful­ness. Was the Vision real? Was it a dream? They know some­thing excit­ing and rather ter­ri­ble has hap­pened, yet noth­ing par­tic­u­lar has hap­pened. As they row home, they hear a song in the reeds bid­ding them to forget.

How long ago and far away now seem those sum­mer nights of child­hood. What was it we found there? Some­thing was there, cer­tain­ly, some­thing excit­ing and rather ter­ri­ble, a pres­ence, if you will, a pow­er that man­i­fests itself in the way things hold togeth­er — sun, moon, stars, crea­tures, plants — a pres­ence that chil­dren are par­tic­u­lar­ly able to per­ceive, espe­cial­ly chil­dren who have been raised on pagan fairy tales and the pipes of Pan.

Most of my life, I think, has been spent try­ing to remem­ber what it was I expe­ri­enced then, to become like a child again in the pres­ence of nature, to per­ceive nature’s whole­ness and my place in it with a child’s puri­ty of sight. Most­ly, we have for­got­ten. So we turn in our mil­lions to the gurus — the Deep­ak Chopras, Mar­i­anne Williamsons, and Thomas Moores — who offer us, for $24.95, var­i­ous sec­ond­hand sub­sti­tutes for the real thing, what Time mag­a­zine last week, in a cov­er sto­ry on spir­i­tu­al­ism and heal­ing, called the “alter­na­tive universe.”

All the while, the real uni­verse is at our doorstep, twin­kling, shin­ing, chat­ter­ing, rustling, scent­ing the sum­mer air with heal­ing per­fume. Remem­ber. Remem­ber. Remember.

There is an impor­tant dif­fer­ence between what we found on the island with Mole and Rat and the sun­ny offer­ings of the new spir­i­tu­al gurus: a fris­son of night fear, an appre­hen­sion of the benev­o­lent and the ter­ri­ble wrapped up togeth­er, the kind­ly faced, goat-foot­ed god.

Are you afraid?” whis­pered Mole to Rat in the pres­ence of the Vision.

Afraid! Of Him? O, nev­er, nev­er! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid.”

Tonight is St. John’s Eve, when the sum­mer sol­stice used to be cel­e­brat­ed in Europe with bon­fires and rev­els, an ancient pagan fes­ti­val giv­en a Chris­t­ian veneer.

What was cel­e­brat­ed was the pres­ence of the divine in nature, friend and helper with an edge of threat, a pres­ence we have most­ly tuned out of our increas­ing­ly vir­tu­al, prepack­aged, guru-coun­seled lives.

But tonight, if we lis­ten with the atten­tive­ness of child­hood, in the pres­ence of sum­mer stars and a quar­ter moon, Jupiter blaz­ing in Sagit­tar­ius, the Milky Way spilling across the zenith, we might hear the almost inaudi­ble song, as Rat heard it, like reeds whis­per­ing far away:

Lest the awe should dwell — And turn your frol­ic to fret — You shall look upon my pow­er at the help­ing hour — But then you shall forget.”

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