Darkness makes the ordinary world wild

IN LA CRESCENTA, the mommies walk at night. In the after-dinner hours, when soap suds still cling to the sides of the kitchen sink, when the homework is done or almost done and television is allowed, the mommies tie their own tennis shoes and take to the streets. They carry golf clubs and baseball bats and are a startling sight to the uninitiated, but this is mountain lion country after all.

Most women are taught to carry something -- keys, pepper spray, a whistle -- whenever they walk alone at night. Something to give your fist some weight or frighten off an attacker. When I walk in La Crescenta at night, I carry the nightstick I inherited from a distant cousin who was a Chicago cop during Prohibition. But I have to wonder what it would be like to take down a cougar with a nightstick.

I have always walked at night. In the dark, things seem clearer, outside and in. There are fewer distractions and more possibility: Colors are muted or erased, lines blur between object and shadow, and the silence is full of sounds that can’t compete with voices or traffic or sunlight.

There is danger too, and the body raises its sensory perception in the dark, fuels a hyper-alertness that is exhilarating. The sound of a footstep behind you at night means something different than it would during the day, a rustle in the bushes could be anything -- a coyote or even a deer -- anything in the moment just after you hear it. The heart jumps; adrenaline floods and there is euphoria in the relief and the release.

Fir trees tower over virtually every home here; the Verdugo Hills lean companionably against the sky. Coming downhill, the lights of Los Angeles shimmer for miles like something spilled; at certain angles the city grid is visible, and it’s easy to imagine I’m in an airplane on my way somewhere. This is a city sky, but there are enough stars to give a small child a lesson in astronomy: Taurus and Orion, the Seven Sisters and the Big Dipper, Cancer and there, perhaps, is Gemini.

Few cars travel these streets at night and for blocks the only sound you hear is your own breath and the occasional, and incredible, tap of a hoof on the pavement. Once, a young buck with a limp followed me for three blocks as images of a modern version of “The Yearling” ran through my head.

In the dark, work fades, and so does time. Maybe it isn’t too late for me to go West like Laura Ingalls Wilder, nevermind that I’m as west as you can get and not drown. A raccoon and its mate waddle by; an owl flies overhead, hooting as if there was another place altogether. I push myself up another portion of steep street; the shadowy hills are fenced off on the other side. Somewhere up the hillside, something gives and a trickle of small rocks pours down.

What would I do if I saw two yellow eyes advancing? Would I be able to scream? To strike? To defend myself? Would I just stand there, or would I just try to run? But walking at night has always been dangerous; if there aren’t mountain lions, there are muggers or rapists or drivers not watching the road.

The darkness helps me pretend I am somewhere else entirely -- a land still wild, where I am guided by stars rather than street signs, where the images of suburbia, of civilization are not so lurid and worrisome. Stepping out the door I imagine myself on a journey, traveling through a place unfamiliar. Only nothing has changed. The houses are only houses, the trees only trees. There is no journey save the internal one. I will wind up where I began every single time. So why is the ritual so necessary?

Especially now. Motherhood always seems just a little bit harder than I thought it would be and many things that once seemed so important must be laid down. Gone, for now, are the backpacking trips and the all-day bike rides, gone are the afternoons spent alone in the woods, the hikes in backcountry, the treks through the snow. Each year, the kids grow a little sturdier, a little more willing and able to walk and hike and generally keep moving under their own steam. But for now, most of my experience of the world is defined by the limits of other people.

I see the other mommies who walk at night, and there is a reason beyond the owls and the deer and the glimmering pool of the city beneath us. In a life ruled by homework and deadlines and potty training and phone calls and sandwiches with no crusts, Mama, it is necessary. Even for an hour, even for 30 minutes. Just to dip our toes into the dark.

Mary McNamara is a staff writer for The Times.