Last night I could not sleep. The Texas spring nights are laced with thick and unrelenting humidity, although during the night it cools off enough to permit easy breaths of night odors and scents. I usually sleep with my window open in such weather, last night being no exception.
My guess is that the humidity is what was subverting my best attempts at a peaceful nights rest. The moonlight was bathing the yard with a lovely glow, and every petal and blade was scintillating with the light of a thousand years. Something drew me out of bed to that open window, I know not what. Leaning on that 85 year-old, wooden window sill, I let the murmuring breeze fill my senses with every sensation that makes Texas nights so divine.
It was sublime in every aspect. The oak trees leaves hung like a crisp hot curtain in the night, while moonlight played with the ground and danced among the rose bushes. The frogs and nightlife rose in a whispering chorus in the darkness. The humidity bathed my forehead with perspiration and soaked every object in its dense and invisible heaviness. The croaking of the frogs echoed eerily in the bank of stillness, sending their melody of satisfaction into every corner of the inky landscape.
I bethought myself of that luscious book on my bookshelf, Plantations of the Low Country, by William and Agnes Baldwin. Set in the lowlands of South Carolina, the grand plantations and manor houses snuggle deeply into thousand year groves of cypress and palmetto trees adorned with Spanish moss and lush creeper plants. Their old halls and rooms, laden with echoes of our heritage, bespeak of a time when air conditioning wasn't a factor. The tall broad windows with their ornate and inviting glass panels lured the lingering air into rooms where the master and lady tossed in tall beds, much like I toss now. The soft, soothing sounds echoed in their ears then, as they do now. Those lovely houses now sit empty in the night, hundreds of miles from here, with nothing but the silent echoes of the past whispering in symphony to the croaking frogs. How many times did a lonely maiden or restless youth stand at those windows, with the same fears and thoughts as I? Locked in the depths of the silent, thick swamp, and wrapped in ceaseless humidity, their thoughts that cried out to the stern trees and whispering nightbirds is forever held sacred in its arms.
The night breeze now fills my nostrils with the sweet scent of the pond lilies and moss, beckoning me deeper. I want to slip into the moonwrapped shimmer and glory of this night, away from the prison of this modern world. To wander in solitude in the night, to be at one with the smells and animals, is to be near to God. This solitude in the night is God's gift to man from the beginning of time. The presence of God in nature, deep in the inky night, lost in the world of a liquid expanse; this is peace.
I close my eyes, and pray to the Father. I am lost in time; time does not matter any longer. I am in South Carolina, a young planter's son who cannot sleep. The hanging moss drips humidity, and the frogs chirp in contented peace.
Let time fly on, let men strive and worry. When I am gone, and time is its relentless march, some exploring traveler will part a veritable mountain of vines and bushes to find this old house on this hill.
He will wander through the echoing, empty rooms, until he comes to mine. There, he will pause on the windowsill and look out, and perhaps, possibly, he will feel what I have felt. Perhaps he will feel what we have all felt, when we have looked out of a window at night into the lovely embrace of the moonlit night.
I turn away from my window, like the young maiden and young planter's son before me, and like them, I reluctantly return to bed.
When I fall asleep at last, it is in my spacious room with tall windows, in my bed with thick cotton sheets. The last thing I hear is the soft symphony in the night. The nightbirds softly cooing, and the wind softly whispering.
And the frogs, the frogs are gently croaking......
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