Light in the Valley

It hasn't happened before or since. Just the one time, and most don't even know about it.

It was a cloudy night, I remember that. We'd been sitting there for some time. Just sitting under that tree. We'd run out of things to discuss, but neither of us wanted to go back. So we just sat there, under the clouds, and we stared over the side of the cliff at the river below.

It was dark. You couldn't really even make out the river. Maybe if it hadn't been so cloudy, maybe there would have been some reflection. Like christmas lights floating in the water. But it was cloudy, so there weren't any christmas lights, just a dark slightly darker than the darkness that surrounded it. The kind of definition you get when you look over the edge of a cliff on a cloudy night.

So we were just sitting there. I thought about putting my arm around her, but it didn't really seem right. She wasn't my girlfriend, and it wasn't that cold. I just wanted to reach out and touch her. You can feel so alone, even with a person right next to you, especially in the dark when no one is talking. But it really wasn't my place to go putting my arm around her, so I didn't. I never thought about whether or not she would have wanted me to.

That's when it happened. At first, it seemed like there was a light, off in the distance, past the end of the river where the water bubbled up out of the rocks. I just thought it was a little lightning in the cloud and ignored it, but it didn't flicker. Instead it glowed steadily, and it got brighter.

The clouds began to part around it, and still it got brighter. Thoughts that maybe it was a plane or a helicopter were gone almost before they were formed, certainly before they were spoken. It was just too bright, and too big now to be anything like that.

Still, we didn't say anything. I wanted to ask her if she saw it. She had to be seeing it. She couldn't not see it. But she didn't say anything. Then again, neither did I, so maybe she was wondering the same about me. Neither of us said anything, and the light grew brighter and brighter.

Soon it was filling the sky, but it didn't seem focused on us. Sure, it was getting closer, but that almost seemed to have more to do with it getting larger than anything else. I wasn't afraid, I wasn't even really curious. It was so strange, and so vast, all I could really do was sit and stare. Soon there wasn't any room in my mind left for fear or wonder. In the face of something so unlike anything I knew, so much more vast than anything I could comprehend, there wasn't room for anything at all. Just sitting and staring and not talking.

It was like what they always tell you in school when they talk about blue whales, how one whale is so much larger than a human. You can't really understand it. The idea of any animal being so vast is more than you can really truly grasp. So they tell you it's like three school buses run on end. They tell you it weighs as much as a hundred cars. They tell you it's bigger than anything else ever was.

But to the kid sitting in his desk, that's all nonsense. You can compare it to whatever you like, he'll never understand the reality of it. He can't. And I couldn't understand what I was seeing that night either.

If you asked me to describe it, I'd use similes. I'd say it was like the sun came down to the earth. I'd say it was like all the light in the world filled the valley beneath the cliff. I'd say it was like being in a lightning storm. I might even say it was like seeing God.

But I can't really tell you what it was, any more than I can tell you what it was like. I might as well say it was like three school buses run on end. It doesn't make any sense to you, any more than it does to the kid in the desk. It's a huge unknowable thing, and when they say you had to be there, this was what they meant.

Then it was gone. It didn't leave any impression behind. There wasn't any damage to the valley. The clouds moved right back in to cover the sky. It didn't even leave an impression on my eyes, like when you stare at a light bulb for too long. It was just there, all unknowable and vast, and then gone.

The entire thing couldn't have lasted more than a few moments. I finally turned to her to ask if she saw it. I knew she would say yes. She had too.

But as I turned to her, I noticed she was looking at something in her hand. A rock she'd picked up earlier in the day. I'd seen her put it in her pocket. It was just a small brown pebble, smooth and flat, just like countless other river rocks by countless other rivers. Suddenly I knew that she hadn't seen it. She'd been staring at that rock. It didn't make sense, surely the light would have caused her to look up, but I just knew that if I asked, she'd tell me she hadn't seen a thing.

So I didn't bother asking. We'd sat there in silence so long anyway, it wasn't worth breaking it now, not when I knew what she'd say anyway. Maybe that's why people stop talking. You know what I mean? Because they know what other people will say. So they just quit.

Anyway, I didn't say anything. I just sat there. After a moment, I turned back to the cliff and looked out over the edge at the river below. There wasn't anything to see there, just the darkness, and after a while we both got up and headed back inside.

Without a word.