Fencerows: Moonlight Saving
By John Luthens
I left work on a Friday and started the drive home. It was pink and red in the west and I could see the frozen field hedges and bare trees bordering the road. It was the same road and the same trees and fields as always. There was still enough light in the sky to see them as more than winter shadows.
The windows were shut and the heater was running. It was still very far from those nights when you see the leaves swaying on the summer breeze and the car windows are open to the smell of fresh-cut hay.
It became darker and mind wandered over worries. Daylight-saving time was coming this weekend. I knew it called me to “spring forward,” and I knew I’d lose an hour of sleep, but I couldn’t remember why. I wondered how many closed-door meetings had been convened to decide the matter in the first place. Mine were not earth shattering worries. They were only the small concerns of life.
Moonrise above the fields of late winter.
The snow across the fields began to glow like a vast expanse of still water. It was almost as if the earth had heard my thoughts about daylight-saving time and was spinning to make it lighter. Then I saw the moon rising.
I kept on driving and the moon shone brighter. I believe I could have turned off the headlights and drove slowly without worry. I thought I may have done that a time or two on the back-country roads of my youth, but I couldn’t recall for certain. My youth seemed as far off as summer.
I was getting along towards home when I passed a friend’s farmhouse. The lights in the old stone house were dark and the barn was neatly closed. The thought occurred to me that daylight-saving time might have something to do with the planting season. I pulled in the drive to wake up the farmer and ask him, but his truck was gone. He wasn’t sleeping. Daylight-saving time never worried him much. I knew he’d be up before light and work till dark regardless. I was pretty sure he was out for a fish fry.
The fields were glass beneath the moon. I had to see for myself. I parked in my friend’s drive and headed out. If he came back with a bellyful of fried perch when I was out for my moonlit stroll, he’d see my boot prints and figure at a glance what I was up to. He’s smart that way. He thinks I’m not right in the head and it makes him laugh.
I saw the deer by their prints. They were in crusted sets of four and several feet apart, telling of a nervous flight across the smooth and shining field. In the fence-line tangles the rabbits had been working their runs and the stripped-bark trees they’d chewed stood out like white bones. Even the tiny, winding tracks of field mice were easy to see beneath the cold glow from above.
I lay down in the field and watched the star constellations climbing slowly from their southern hibernation. Strips of high clouds rode an arc across the sky and the moon caused them to glow and dance like the northern lights. I lay in the field for a long time and watched the lighted sky. A coyote howled from far off and it set the farm dogs into a frenzied chorus.
I forgot I was concerned with losing a solitary hour of sleep. Beneath a majestic moon that had been there forever, I forgot I was ever concerned with anything at all.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com, or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com