Nightwalking: exploring the dark with peripheral vision - includes tips on nightwalking

Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1991 by Nelson Zink, Stephen Parks

After a couple of hours of walking along the road we began to experience a deep sense of relaxation. We noticed our hands had warmed considerably, an indication that stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system was somehow related to the experience of secand sight.

Each time we have walked probably a hundred times by now), a sense of deep calm has been experienced. It took a while to understand what was going on, but our theory is this: Walking while relying only on secand sight requires that the conscious mind trust the non-conscious, and this inter-mind trust is the essence of relaxation itself.

On the next few outings we picked steeper grades and rougher terrain. We found we could easily control fatigue and pain by using an application of will - focusing attention on the tired body part, for instance, and moving the discomfort off to the edges of awareness, virtually the same process as moving our attention about in the great field of peripheral vision without moving our eyes.

In our reading we had been reminded that in darkness, peripheral (rod) vision is far superior to focused (cone) vision. Night vision relies almost entirely on rods, which because of their neural connections and physical makeup are very sensitive to light. Rods need about thirty minutes of dark or dim red light to activate fully, and then, it is claimed, they have the capacity to detect a single photon - the equivalent, in clear air, of detecting the flame of a candle that is ten miles away. In the dark, cones are for the most part visually useless, and so we figured that walking in the dark would force us to become even more dependent on peripheral vision. It was time to up the ante.

We modified the headgear by painting the beads with luminescent paint and increased our daily intake of Vitamin A (necessary for the formation of visual purple, a substance which enables the eyes to adjust from bright light to darkness) to 50,000 IU for a week to make sure we weren't deficient.

We picked an area where we hadn't walked before and started out around sunset. For the first hour of walking we noticed all the familiar inner shifts and sensations. And then something strange happened: we entered the night. We really don't have a better description. When it became apparent that we could see perfectly well, the night became alive. Rabbits hopped by, nighthawks and bats flew past to check us out. Our steps got lighter, walking was approaching the status of flight. We felt like we'd fully entered the experience of secand sight.

Other senses expanded even more than we'd experienced before. Balance became much more sensitive. Later we developed a very slow-walking kind of Tai Chi just to enjoy this exquisite sense of balance. Our skin started to feel peculiar, more "solid" perhaps, and we found we could walk comfortably in quite chilly air without any clothes. Probably due to our increased ability to concentrate and the air qualities of night, hearing and smell were vastly improved. As we became proficient at seeing in the dark, we found that we could run down arroyos and climb steep banks in the dead of night, afl the while focusing on the luminescent beads. With the calm of Nightwalking, we discovered that anxiety and fear of the dark, so common in our culture, are effectively eliminated. Fear, anxiety and even physical pain are seemingly associated with focused vision, while peripheral processes engender relaxation and delight, a state we have half-seriously dubbed Sense-Surround.