Noctivagant

It means... well, it's from the same component parts as 'nocturnal vagrant.' So I guess you could call me a night wanderer. But that's not quite right. See, 'night' is a deceptive word. Growin' up on Terra, we get to thinking of night being opposed to day. The second part of a balanced whole. But out there... I mean, when you've really been out there, and not just for a run or two but. For a lot of time. You get to understand the fallacy of connoting night as being juxtaposed with day. Back on Terra, there isn't real night. Not total night. I'm not just talking about light pollution and the diurnal instinct, though I guess that's part of it too. I'm talking about emptiness. Vast emptiness - we don't really have a good word for it. Night just sort of comes close. Now sure there's stars and planets, cattle-herds of asteroids, and nebulae so enormous we measure them in megaparsecs; but when you start to think of those as being the reigning materials of a cellular universe you're falling into the same quotidian trap. And no I'm not spoutin' that nihilistic rhetoric about us all being so spread thin and insignificant. What I am talking about is the night as a place, apart. Noumenon. Standing back on my old farm and looking up at all the haunted glory of the dark and naked welkin, I don't feel so much that I am in the night as I am looking out at it. And that makes me restless.

John Muir once said, "The mountains are calling and I must go." That speaks to me. For me, it is the night that is calling. And I must go.