GOING TO THE LIGHT
Rex Burress
Even though I have written about light before, to write about light is the right thing, especially during the lighted Christmas season.
Aside from the profusion of holiday lights, I was reminded again about the attraction of light, when, after an eye examination when things are fuzzy, one rather heads for a lighted room instead of the dark exit, like a fly trapped in a house and drawn to the window light. (That fly also flew, endlessly, around my computer light, avoiding my swatting like a flight-fiend empowered with radar and malice.)
An eye's ability to see the light is quite miraculous. Although animals have a number of super sensitive senses to help them in prowling around the woods, light and keen eyesight is a major factor in their existence, just as plants are going toward the light the minute they start growing.
Plants are attracted to sunlight because their systems are designed to function by light churning-out chlorophyll. Those cells generate growth leading to the all-important completion of the seed. From the moment a seed germinates, it thrusts a leaf-sprout upward toward the light, and a root-sprout downward into the dark seeking water.
You could say a leaf loves light leading to life, just as roots love darkness and water! Arlo Gutherie said to have light you need a dark to stick it in, and like habitats use a variety of factors for a balance, dark is the other condition that emphasizes light.
In Somalia, Africa, National Geographic featured a boy who had “a childhood in darkness” without electricity until 11 years old. The family used only kerosene lamps. As an adult, the boy works to bring electricity to the villages. I can relate because I, too, lived without electricity and experienced kerosene lamps until age 11 on the Missouri farm, but nevertheless, the kerosene lamp was a reliable light in the night when fueled. Going to the barn in the winter darkness before dawn with a kerosene lantern is memorable.
The leaf-to-light process is most dramatically seen in vines. All along the river, grapevines can be seen clawing their way higher in trees and shrubs to gather a share of sunshine. During the autumn season the deciduous grape-leaves take on tinges of red and yellow before falling to the ground, deserting the vines that dangle like frayed strands of rope until recharged in the springtime.
While most songbirds cling to their perches in the dark, they welcome the rising sun in the dawn of a new day, eager to escape the perilous night when predators were prowling. Owls are rather universal in being birds of the nightlife, able to sail through the dark and pluck any nocturnal mouse from a careless misstep. A barn owl from Spain was pictured in a pictorial story, and it was identical with barn owls in America. A few bird species are universal, but generally each continent features its own variations. The Robin Redbreast in England is not the same as the American Robin.
Migratory birds, however, disperse over the earth like mushroom spores in the wind. Waterfowl generally have migration routes, but sometimes wander to other countries which excites those watching for rare bird sightings. At Lake Merritt in Oakland, the Tufted Duck and Eurasian Wigeon from Europe sometimes appear among the Scaups and American Wigeon. Once in the Everglades I saw a Bahama Pintail from South America. It is as if they are directed by a light within, often flying at night following their internal senses.
There is an abandoned train tunnel along the Diversion Pool at Oroville, and it is just long enough to be in complete darkness in the middle. Walk a few feet and the light at the other end glows faintly, but due to the heavily trod trail, an electric light was installed and the atmospheric drama was lost, except, you have a choice of turning the switch. Like Halloween, leave the light off if you dare!
“Light again, leaf again, life again, love again...
Love again, song again, nest again, young again...”
--Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Come forth into the light of things; Let Nature be your teacher.”
--William Wordsworth