“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, ‘Farming: A Handbook’ (1970)

We modern humans have become addicted to light and shun the darkness and everything we associate with it. It is foolish that we deny her, for the Night is the mother of the entire Earth. The entire cosmos floats in darkness and all galaxies sprang from darkness. The darkness was there before the light, and gave birth to the light. Once we walked and slept, like other animals under the stars and the Night was the place of intimacy, rest and life - it was our home. In this walk we reconnect with the hidden world of the Night.

We begin the walk with Sunset, where we become acquainted with the tides we find ourselves in in an animistic way: the season, the natural environment, the other animals and their rhythms, and what we, physically and mentally, internally and externally, traditionally do during this time. We first explore the nature reserve with our eyes and feet, and there are stories to tell. As it grows darker and we see less and less, we slowly work towards stillness. We use no light sources, literally entering the darkness together. The emphasis increasingly shifts to all our other senses—hearing, smell, taste, touch, intuition, and relaxation. Owls, bats, hedgehogs, ducks and geese, horses, buzzards, frogs, and deer live there, but Appelbergen is primarily home to a family of hundreds of crows and jackdaws that nest in the treetops at night. We practice moving silently so as not to disturb the other animals, and we sharpen our hearing. We thus explore, once again, the life of the night. On the New Moon, the darkness is complete and intimate, where the outside world merges with your inner self. On the Full Moon, you discover another world, enveloped in the magical, icy glow of the Night.