A quiet midnight trip home turns into a reminder that the world still hums along perfectly well without our supervision.
Out there, alone on dark water, the line between comfort and unease gets beautifully thin.
The boat I was using that evening was a Wharram Tiki 21 propelled by an electric trolling motor. The motor’s not fast, and it’s certainly not impressive, but it’s reliable and — most importantly — quiet. The kind of quiet that feels intentional, as though we were trespassing on something delicate. I eased the throttle forward and the boat began to slide away from the dock without so much as a ripple, and I thought: this is what a cat must feels like wandering around at night.
Coming back from dinner with friends the other night, I ended up returning a little later than expected — close to midnight. I hadn’t planned on staying that long. Dinner had that pleasant, lazy rhythm that tends to stretch out when the stories are good, the food is better, and nobody’s checking their watch. We weren’t solving the world’s problems — as people tend to do after a couple of drinks — just talking about them. By the time I got back to our Tangaroa 35 catamaran ‘Curious’, the moon was well up and the water was pitch black.
A few minutes into the trip, I turned off the running lights. Not because I was trying to be rebellious, but because I wanted the dark to swallow me whole. The world immediately changed. The reflections disappeared, the shoreline melted away, and I was left floating in a kind of soft, liquid darkness.
Then, the sounds began.
The water started speaking in tiny languages — clicks, splashes, swirls. Every one of them sounded personal, like a conversation I wasn’t invited to but was close enough to overhear. A fish would strike at the surface with a quick smack, and another would follow with a smaller, less confident version. The whole scene was alive with commotion, both violent and peaceful at the same time.
It struck me that this sort of experience is becoming rare. Most people, even those who live near the water, never really hear it. The background hum of convenience equipment, boat engines are getting ridiculously huge and most waterfronts glow like carnival rides. But there I was, in the dark, traveling at the pace of a slow thought, listening to life happen around me.
The shoreline houses were dark and respectable, the kind that tuck themselves in early. A few porch lights burned like lazy fireflies, and every now and then a motion sensor would flick on — probably because some nocturnal creature had wandered into a suburban security zone. It’s a very “end-of-the-road” sort of neighborhood, the kind where people move to get away from things, and then realize there’s not much left to get away from.
In the glow of a few submerged dock lights, the water took on that eerie aquarium quality — lit from below, with shadows moving through layers of green. The small ones zipped through like nervous commuters, darting in and out of the light, while deeper down larger figures glided through with a kind of ancient patience. I caught sight of something that looked about two feet long, moving slow and deliberate, a shadow that didn’t care about being seen. There’s a hierarchy down there that we only ever glimpse, and I had the distinct impression that most of the sub aquatic residents were avoiding eye contact.
Out past the lights, the black water shimmered with sound. You couldn’t see the surface, but you could hear the stories it was telling — somebody feeding, somebody fleeing. Life and death happening right there beneath me, entirely unbothered by the human world’s sense of importance.
The trees along the shore played their own part in this dark theater. Their moon shadows stretched across the water, long and ghostly, swaying with the light breeze. Every so often, a branch would move in a way that felt intentional, and I’d catch myself staring too long, wondering what exactly was watching whom. Then a bird — usually a heron — would launch from its perch and glide low across the water. When it passed close, it would let out a loud squawk, and every time it startled me just enough to be grateful for my mortality.
There’s something about being alone in the dark that resets the ego. You stop being the protagonist of your own story and start feeling more like background noise. The water doesn’t care what kind of day you’ve had. The fish aren’t interested in your ambitions or concerns. Even the moon seems vaguely amused that you’re still awake.
And yet, it’s oddly comforting — this reminder that you’re small, temporary, and entirely replaceable. People pay good money for mindfulness retreats to learn that. All you really need is a quiet motor, a moonlit waterway, and the nerve to turn the lights off.
At one point I cut the motor and just let the boat drift. There was no wind, no current worth mentioning — just the slow rotation of the world and the tiny movements of creatures below. The hull made faint creaking noises when I moved, and occasionally something bumped against it, a polite knock from below that said, “You’re in my way.” I thought of all the times I’d been too busy to notice how alive the night really is, and how most of us mistake silence for emptiness. It’s not empty at all. It’s just occupied by things that don’t need to announce themselves.
The smell of the water was stronger in the dark — that earthy mix of salt, mud, and something indefinably alive. Every sense gets sharper when you can’t rely on sight. The faint hum of insects, the whisper of reeds as creature pushes through, even the occasional splash of something heavy just out of view — all of it added up to a kind of music. Not the sort you hum along to, but the sort that fills you without asking permission.
It was around then that I started feeling the edge of that peculiar loneliness that’s equal parts comfort and unease. You know the one — when you’re the only human around for what feels like miles, and you can’t decide whether to feel lucky or mildly doomed. I was never in any real danger, but there’s an unmistakable awareness that comes when you realize nature could flick you off the map with less effort than you spend swatting a mosquito.
I began to think about how rare true darkness has become. Our modern world has been lit up so thoroughly that we’ve forgotten what it looks like without us. The stars overhead seemed almost relieved to have someone notice them. They were bright enough to cast a faint reflection on the water, little trembling echoes of light that looked like they were trying to climb back into the sky.
Somewhere in the distance, a mullet jumped, because that’s what mullet do — for reasons known only to themselves. A heron gave a single, exasperated squawk from the shoreline, probably protesting my presence. Every sound felt amplified and significant. It’s funny how, in daylight, we ignore half of what we hear, but at night, each sound feels like a clue to a mystery we’ll never solve.
Drifting there, I started thinking — as one does when given too much quiet — about how most of us spend our days surrounded by noise, filling every silence as if it were a gap in programming. Music, podcasts, the constant hum of engines and conversation. Out here, none of that applied. The night had its own rhythm, and it didn’t need accompaniment.
I remembered something a friend once said after his first night anchoring out alone: “You don’t sleep much the first few nights — not because you’re scared, but because you keep realizing how alive everything else is.” I understood that perfectly now. Out here, the water and the air trade secrets you can’t quite hear.
After a while, I turned the motor back on — just a whisper of thrust — and began to make my way home. The shoreline slipped by like a series of sketches: the faint outline of a dock, the dark silhouette of a mangrove, a forgotten buoy bobbing lazily. Every little thing looked more meaningful than it did in daylight, as if night were the original artist and daylight just the copyist.
As I drew closer to my boat, I passed through one of those underwater light zones again. The fish were still there, swirling in silent chaos. I slowed to a stop just to watch. It struck me how effortless their world seemed — dangerous, yes, but honest. Nobody was pretending to be something they weren’t. You eat or you’re eaten. You hide or you’re seen. It’s not a system built for comfort, but it’s fair in its own way.
A few minutes later, I reached my catamaran Curious. The deck boards creaked under my weight, the ropes strained a little, and the familiar smells of wood and ropes met me. The house lights in the distance looked warm, civilized, and slightly out of place — like they belonged to another world that hadn’t yet figured out how to enjoy the dark.
I climbed up on deck and just stood there for a while, listening while my kitty cat came up from the cabin, yawned and stretched beside me. The night went on exactly as it had before I arrived — unconcerned, unaltered. A breeze came through the trees, and somewhere out on the water, another fish jumped, probably startled by nothing at all.
It occurred to me that we spend most of our lives trying to make the world convenient, easier, safer — and in doing so, we lose touch with this small, wild truth: that being part of the world means being at its mercy now and then. It’s humbling in the best way.
As I finally dropped below, I looked back once more at the still water. The surface reflected a few stars, the faint glow from a distant porch light, and not much else. I thought of all the creatures going about their nightly business, utterly indifferent to my brief intrusion. And I felt something close to gratitude — not for the adventure, but for the reminder that the world doesn’t need me to keep turning.
I went to bed that night with the portholes open, listening to the faint slap of water against the hull, and thought: maybe that’s the secret to peace — not mastering the night, but learning to drift quietly through it.
Sometimes the best part of being alone on the water isn’t the peace — it’s the perspective. You see the quiet cruelty and quiet beauty living side by side, both part of the same system that keeps going whether we’re there to notice or not. It’s humbling, a little eerie, and exactly the sort of thing that makes life afloat feel so rich.
Journey Island Style 