Alone In The Darkness, Seeing Perfectly A Path To Peace

The Age

Monday May 26, 2008

Melissa Morgan - Melissa Morgan is in year 10

During a school trip to the remote indigenous community of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory, the year 10 students of Mount Evelyn Christian School (pictured) took part in The Darkness Activity. On a moonless night, they headed from their camp and into the bush with a torch, a stool, a pen and a journal. A whistle blew and five minutes of darkness and quiet began. When another whistle sounded, torches came on and the students recorded their experience. This is Melissa Morgan's response:

AWAY into the darkness that flees from the beams of our torch-light, murmurs, snatches of joking conversation float about on the breeze, buzzing about my ears. We spread out, the noise lessens. The dull beam of my torch becomes an unbearable intrusion. I switch it off; alone but for the sound of my footsteps.

I sit down, trying to focus on the peace. A road-train roars past, covered with dazzling lights that upset the darkness, a man-made monster that leaves behind its noisy stain and dulls the senses to the muted aspects of the outback.

When all traces of the truck's passage have finally faded, the soft contrasts of the night around me reveal themselves. The trees about me are silhouetted against the clouds; impossibly detailed and dark, their branches delicate and black beyond imagining. The ground is covered by the blanket of darkness. Small bushes cower in the shadows of their elders. The night air is mild and cool.

The fresh breeze that plays about the trees has its own song, not merely the rustling of leaves as evidence of its passing, but a low, gentle whoooa. A melodic howl.

The low cloud cover is a thin wispy gauze strung across the sky, shrouding in the stars, softening their glow. The stars are strewn across the sky, almost invisible silken diamonds. The air is calm, undisturbed as the earth slumbers on, its gentle breath sighing all about me.

A whistle blows, piercing the heart of the silence. Torches flicker on, slicing through darkness' side. Darkness bleeds, shadow blood flowing freely.

Walking back, the peace is disturbed. Voices and light bob, just perceivable through the ghostly apparitions of trees. Sand crunches beneath my feet. I look up at the night sky. Suddenly, the flimsy cloud cover just above me is torn away by unseen hands, the stars gleaming brightly against the darkness. I have never been so utterly at peace.

Melissa Morgan is in year 10

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