It is extraordinarily quiet here in Wellfleet tonight. It’s been cool and grey all day, and just at dusk a thick fog crept in. The air is heavy and still, and a gentle rain is falling. It is the first day of the new Moon, and the sky is utterly back.
We live on a small hilltop on a little dirt road in the woods, about half a mile from the harbor, and although it is Friday night on a major holiday weekend, nary a soul is stirring anywhere within earshot. Even the coyotes, who often gather at night for no apparent reason other than to see how much noise they can make, are keeping mum.
When you are used to living in New York City, which is always ablaze with lights and throbbing and humming with purposeful clamor, such darkness and silence has quite an effect. Tonight seems almost actively black and quiet, and stepping outside one feels oneself in the presence of a great enveloping blotter, drawing out all that hustle and bustle so that something else, perhaps, may enter.