It was my first summer here, more than a decade ago. I didn’t know the place very well yet and I was still getting used to walking around the woods, especially at night. «Why do you go walking in the woods at night?» I hear you asking. Because why the hell not, that’s why. There’s a reason why woods and forests at night have always been part of folk tales: even places you’re familiar with and that you have walked countless times can suddenly look very different when walked at night.
But let’s go back to my first summer. My new neighbour had organised a small gathering to celebrate his wedding and so up I went, walking through the woods behind the house, on a road I have since walked hundreds of times. The sun was still up in the sky, the late afternoon light shining through the trees, one of the most enjoyable spectacles available in life.
I didn’t spend much time at the gathering; I was new here and didn’t really know anyone, plus I’m not exactly a party animal. There’s a reason why I walk around the woods at night. And so I said goodbye and headed back home, this time through a different, longer path. A normal road this time, not a trail in the woods.
Slight tangent: the way it works here is that villages and towns used to be connected through what are here called “mulattiere”, which are roughly paved roads that were once used to move goods that were carried on top of mules. These are often quite steep, and they go through all sorts of weird terrains, which is why when modernity came and it was time to build proper roads for cars and tracks, they didn’t repurpose those old roads. Instead they built new ones, that are usually a lot less steep but also way longer.
As an example, to get from my house to the next village—that is right behind and above me as I type this—I can take the old mulattiera—the one I walked that late afternoon—and I’d be there after having walked roughly 750 meters while also gaining 130 meters of elevation in the process. Getting to the exact same spot via the modern road—the one I took that night coming back home—means walking 3.4km, so it’s almost 5 times longer.
So down the road I went, happily walking at night, in a lovely summer night with a bright moon in the sky and its pale light struggling to find its way through the trees and onto the road. It didn’t matter, though; it was still plenty bright to see where I was going.
But then, after about 15 or so minutes—it takes a moment or two to get back home through this silly modern road—I saw it. It was standing there, completely still. Not quite in the middle of the road, but almost.
I stopped.
«The fuck is that thing?» I asked myself. It was still standing there, perfectly still. A white shape, maybe half a meter tall? Hard to say from a distance and at night. «Is it even alive? Is that a plastic bag? Is it a gnome?» Mind was racing wildly.
That thing was still there. Still perfectly still. Didn’t make a single sound. It was just a white shape, standing in the middle of the road.
So what do you do when you’re in the middle of nowhere, at night, in the woods, and a weird-looking white shape is standing in the middle of the road? You say «fuck it» and you go see what it is. And as I was approaching, that oddly looking shape finally did move. It flew up, as silently as it looked majestic, and landed on a branch just high enough to be outside my reach (not that I had any intention to go grab it).
It was a barn owl, one of the most oddly looking birds you can stumble upon while walking in the woods at night.
I didn’t have my phone with me, so no picture of the barn owl, unfortunately. But I do have a picture from one of my random walks in the dark on one of those mulattiere.
— M
