The Night of Revelation

This is the night of revelation.

And this is what happens.  We drink cold beers on the dock-end of the wooden jetty.  After the Anakiwa Hostel check-in, after the welcome/introduction speech from the hostel owner Shane, after throwing our bags into our shared room.  We drink cold beers on the dock-end of the wooden jetty.  The pylons act as back rests and the bare feet dangle.  Into the salt water, into the sound water.  The sea.

The sun already gone and the cloud reefs now back-lit by the light of a vanished star.  The neon sky poised above the surrounding mountains as if it will swoop.  The clouds red-rimmed and raw and violent like a massacre of heaven itself. 

And then the light gone all together and the ragged gray rags left hanging in the pale sky where the colors had danced in the setting.

And this is what happens.  We sit in the darkening.  In the slow fade with our feet still dangling and we talking about the lives we’ve lived and the lives we have left to live.

Waiting on the light to disappear.  Waiting on the night time.  And the night time falling around us.  Until it is dark enough.  Robin’s eyes the only gauge we have because she is the only one of us who has seen what we are going to see.

And once it is dark enough we fill our pockets with beer bottles and head down the Queen Charlotte Track.  Invisible down the trail we.  Now hunters in the night, and hunting that mirror.  That mirror planted in the damp secret spots of the earth.  Reflecting the night time sky and reflecting the entirety of the universe.  That mirror composed of a million tiny organisms.  The effect of the whole rendered possible by the work of the miniscule minions.  By the work of the soul-bright soldiers.  By the work of this: the glowworm.

And all of a sudden we are upon them.  And I cannot believe the sight before my eyes.

And this is what happens: we stop like two pegs plugged into a game board.  Stopped.  And silent.  Creeping now on tip-toe over the trail.  As if the glowing will stop.  As if the worms will vanish if we make but the slightest sound.

So we are silent and creeping into the glow.  By slow degrees.  Each point specific.  And a few lead to a few more and these to a few more until we are surrounded.  And once surrounded we sit on a wooden bridge erected over the life-blood of this light colony.  Erected over the water that dampens the hillside shining.  And we whisper back and forth about the scene.

And the scene is the night sky blanketing the earth.  All around us.  And we like titans or gods themselves sitting on an invisible bridge suspended in the sky and looking down at the universe.  At the ink black speckled with shining stars.  The constellations clustered where rocks have fallen out of the dirt embankment by the side of the trail, or where water has trickled out of the stream and dampened the duff beneath the trees.

And we are ancient astronomers stumbling through the dark.  Staring at the starry ground and returning with more beer to our bridge in the sky.  And “the only thing that would be better,” says Robin, sitting beside me now with the universe below both of our feet and the constellations burrowed into the hillside before us, “the only thing that would be better is if we could dive into it.”

And later in the night we do.  And this is how it happens.

After an hour or so in the glow worm heavens, we get up and go.  Taking with us as tokens only the memory of the trip and our empty beer bottles.  Back to the backpackers hostel to root through the communal fridge for more beer and then down to the jetty jutting into the sound.

We take up the same seats that we were sitting in during the sunset—the dock and pylon chairs—and we fall back into the same conversation.  Having forgotten that during the welcome/introduction speech given by the hostel owner, Shane, we were informed by him that—besides the glowworms—the phosphorescence might be worth checking out.  “If it’s around,” he had said.  “Because it comes and goes with the tides,” he had said.  “Because it comes and goes.”

So—having forgotten this—we sit in our seats and sip on our beers and talk about life and the lifetimes to come.  Until Robin interrupts me mid-sentence, saying this, and only this, “They are here.”

Her foot has fallen into the water, and I follow her eyes to the point where the flesh enters the sea.  And there, oscillating out in ripples from her ankle, is something I can only describe as glitter confetti.  Flashing through the water.

“Put your foot in,” she says.  So I strip the shoe and the sock and submerge the bare foot in the water and all of a sudden it—that is the foot—is breathing fairy dust into the dark wet.  A thousand points of light bursting from the pale foot in the water.

And—once again—I cannot believe the sight before my eyes.  I am literally awestruck.  I am having trouble believing what I am seeing.  And how did I not know that this existed?  How?

We jump up and run to the stairs that lead down.  Into the water.  And we stand on the steps and stomp on the wooden stairs below the surface.  And every stomp brings forth from the wood a fountain of light that shrouds our feet in the brightness.  We stomp a firework show out of the wet-wood.  Laughing and shouting and kicking the water brilliant.  And who knows how long we are there.

But it dawns on us that we must get into the water.  All of us: from head-top to foot-bottom: all of us.  And we do.  And I am covered in sparkle dust as soon as I dive in.  Flailing my arms and legs in the water and shouting over and over into the night that “I’m a star.”  And all of me—my entirety—glowing beneath the surface, and Robin’s as well.  And we swimming in arcs.  Cradling the water in our hands and tossing it into the air so that the showers of liquid sparks rain down on us.

This is the magic water and this.  This is the night of revelation.  Because who knew that such things could exist.  Not me.  No.  Not me.  This is the natural world, and I cannot recall a moment in my life where I was more absolutely amazed. 

The glowworms and the phosphorescence.  The natural night world on fire.  Burning green and gold with the electric feel.  And this is what the world is for.

And we are a part of it.  Within it.  And a part of it.  Not apart from it.  But a part—a piece, and an integral piece—of it.  And from this night forward I will never be able to forget this fact.

So burn.  And burn, baby, burn.

This is the night of revelation.