by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

The first lightning bolt struck very, very close, even before it began to rain. Electrical storms are more severe in the mountains, and San Miguel, despite the high-altitude plain stretching out around us, is in the mountains. And then, colonia Insurgentes (the northwest corner of San Luis Rey), my new neighborhood, is up a hill.

The approach to my new house is through a neighborhood much like any other, perhaps a little poorer. On the far outskirts of town, San Luis Rey, yet undiscovered by the gentry, lacks the cafes, restaurants and other adornments of the expat community. The concrete pavement turns to cobbles as you climb the hill and turn right onto the last street in the neighborhood.

Parking in front of my new home, one is confronted by the ever-present massive front wall guarding the property. The door through this opens onto a patio garden, another nearly ubiquitous feature here in San Miguel. The house itself is handsome, but no more so than many, many others here in this well-appointed city.

The uniqueness, the marvel of the place is grasped looking out the back windows. Of course, that there are rear windows at all is rather unique here in a town where virtually every house backs right up to another house's rear wall.

The back wall of this house is full of windows on all three storeys. But the really wonderful thing is that like the glass wall of an aquarium it looks into a completely different medium, out upon another world.

The wall is built right on the northern edge of town, a very hard edge. Here the city abruptly ends, and miles of uninterrupted campo, uninhabited countryside begins. A friend, admiringly commented on the photo I sent her, "That kind of view clears the mind." I responded, "It brings life." But it also inspires other sentiments.

The other night, taking the dog for a short walk, looking across the empty lot nextdoor, out into that wide darkness, I was able to distinguish, there without moon or stars to light the scene, the greater blackness of the mountain against the lesser blackness of the sky.

The moment put me in mind of my property in Vermont. It was remote, in the least populated corner of the Union's least populated state. Twenty miles from Canada, I had 150 acres, up the side of a mountain, one-half mile up through the woods from the dead-end the town road makes on the former Mad Brook Farm commune (now a land trust). Those acres, the meadow I reclaimed, the lodge I built and the three ponds I dug along that meadow, were surrounded by tens of thousands of forested wilderness.

One man, who went hiking alone, in that great, lonely space, got lost and, after trekking a long way, spent the night in a summer cabin he was lucky to find aside a small lake. In the morning, he walked out the long, long, dirt road (really a "driveway") to the blacktop and hitchhiked his way back to the Farm.

I kept the grass better mowed around the lodge than I did in the meadow, especially when guests were coming, thus creating a yard. That lawn extended from the cabins to the lower pond, a spring-fed delight on a hot summer day. There was also a path through the meadow, leading up into and continuing through the forest, where marvellous geological formations were to be found, including a circle of boulders, a hundred-foot cliff with a magnificent view, and, if you went all the way, off of my land, to the summit of Bald Mountain with a panoramic view from its firetower.

I made an attempt to run the place as a healing retreat, and while doing so found that a certain type of guest exhibited symptoms of what I diagnosed as latent agoraphobia. These people had no problem going outside in town, city or suburb. A trip to the park or a roadside visit to the country was fine. But the vastness of the unpopulated forest gave them the willies. Despite my coaxing and reassuring company, they refused to venture beyond the lawn around the lodge.

Raw nature gives me the willies, too; I just never let that stop me. Looking out across the unpopulated blackness behind my new house or watching the gathering light of a misty dawn reveal the vista, each time I do it, is an awful experience, in the original sense of the word, full of awe.

We humans have reassuring hormones, endorphins, that the brain only produces when we are in the company of others. Even if you have never spoken with him, just having a nextdoor neighbor is tremendously, chemically reassuring.

Yesterday's late afternoon thunderstorm knocked out the power. I didn't notice immediately, but when I did I began looking for my candles. There are more somewhere in these yet unpacked boxes, but as it was, I came up with two stubs of tapers and a fat candle that gave only a muted, general glow.

After finding those, I took care of a few chores, like feeding the cat, and prepared for the darkness. I thought of bothering my new housemate for another candle, he has some of the votive variety; I thought of uncoupling the solar-powered patio light hanging from his balcony; but I settled down to enjoy the view out of my back bedroom window of night coming in over the wilderness

When darkness fully fell, the small flame of the fat table-top candle assumed an inordinate importance, a tiny glow of humanity. I thought to compose this week's article on this laptop, but the glow of the screen was too much at odds with the ambient darkness.

Instead, not yet fully recovered from the effort of my move of residence last week, I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. Lighting the two taper stubs, I had enough light to read a couple of the short chapters of my book, if I held the pages just right. I was better prepared for it in Vermont, but I had the same candlelight bedtime ritual up in those mountains.

Liminal is the word for my new situation; a border, a place in between. Look out front and there is the reassurance of others of my species, the chamba, the hurly-burly of society. Look out back and there is the raw force of nature, the primordial, eternal vastness as Hemingway and Jung felt it on the plains of Africa.

Last night, the blackout reminded me of the effort, technological and moral, required to keep society in place. The electrical field down, the dark tide of nature rose higher than usual, flooding my narrow beachfront along this northern edge of San Miguel.

This morning, the sun making its way through the clouds, everything is dripping. The power still isn't on. But with my laptop holding a charge, and with me not so dumb-struck by the awfulness of the unbridled world, I've managed to write this article.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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