The clocks took the stars

   When I first moved to San Francisco, I was enamored by the beach. Getting there from where I lived in New York City was really a pain (and a commitment of the good part of a day), and I relished that here, in my new home, I could take a thirty minute ride on public transportation there. Later, I got a car, and it became even easier.
   In those first couple of years, I would walk the shoreline, enjoying watching groups of snowy plovers dart in and out of the receding waters. Often, I would sit at the top of the dunes, off to myself, and think.
   Later on, I started to drive on occasion to the Marin Headlands, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, to walk or look at California quail. Then, I discovered some of the beautiful spots in Golden Gate Park, closer to my apartment.
   It was here that I realized I could walk the same stretch of path around Stow Lake, taking in all of the life there, and have now done so for perhaps three years now. I am there now almost daily, and have rarely felt bored or tired of it. The animal life fluctuates to some extent by season, but it is mostly the weather and varying light that creates the nuances that keep me interested in a physical environment that doesn't seem to change that much.
   As the days have been getting steadily shorter during this late fall, the sunrise further and further away when I arrive, I have been able to experience early mornings that have on occasion been quite clear. I have been moved by the deepness of the sky, the clarity of the stars, and the sometimes beautiful glow of the moonlight.
   Many times, I just like to be part of an environment that is so dark and still.
   I have looked up to the sky, seeing signs of living that at the moment are every bit as vivid as the ones nearby me, including my body, Even though I  believe that those things are in some ways imperceptily far away, I still feel as related to that as I do to this. There is something about the sometimes near darkness, at other times deep blue illumination, that reminds me how little of the world I really know.
   I never really purported to know much of the world, anyway.
   Today marked the end of daylight savings time, and already I feel melancholic for that near-absence of light. Getting to the lake one hour earlier is not so feasible, and even if I did, I risk getting a ticket for parking there before 6:00 a.m.
   When I was there this morning, a guy who I see regularly made a comment about how light it was there today, and seemed pleased by the fact. Although it has been at times somewhat frightening in that early hour, with so few (sometimes, no other) people around, I have come to love it.
   In some ways, I feel like I had discovered something that didn't exist before for me.