Get to work! New non-fiction books: The sense of smell awakens in the dark

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Do you also know such moments? Sometimes I lie in bed at night and think about the walk I took during the day. And I imagine what a mountain path, a forest or a river looks like at this sleepy hour in complete darkness: a little creepy, like at a scout baptism decades ago, when I had to wander through the dark thickets – and I climb deeper into the blanket and enjoy the peace and security in bedroom

“Walking through the country at night means entering a dark, adventurous continent from which you return with wonderful stories of discovery,” writes British farmer and writer John Lewis-Stempel (56) in his book, recently published in German. Growing up in rural Herefordshire on the Welsh border, as a teenager he had to walk home from a pub five kilometers away after curfew.

He turned what was originally a necessity into a lifelong pleasure: Lewis-Stempel is an avid night hiker. But he has a problem: “A man who walks alone at night is considered a criminal,” he writes, “unless he is walking his dog.” And from then on, he made night forays through forests and meadows with his black Labrador dog Edith. “She needed exercise, and I needed an excuse.”

First of all, walking at night leads to a change in the heart. Lewis-Stempel describes how moonlight on a stubble field is a visual experience. “But in ordinary darkness other dormant feelings come to life.” The sense of touch as he feels the trees with his fingers; hearing, because he hears sounds that a purely diurnal creature would not notice. “The greatest discovery in the dark, however, is the sense of smell,” Lewis-Stempel says. “Every flower, every meadow, every forest smells stronger at night.”

Not only flora, but also fauna takes on a different quality at night, because animals do not wait to meet humans. “The great migrations take place at night,” writes “Britain’s greatest nature writer” (The Times). When frogs, hedgehogs, etc. crawl along the streets, it sometimes ends tragically. Lewis-Stempel: “Nocturnal animals always get shot down, don’t they? Confused and paralyzed by the headlights of speeding cars.”

Light is a thorn in the side of the night traveler: he avoids street lamps and lights the flashlight he carries for safety when a car passes by. “In just ten years, from 1990 to 2000, light pollution in England increased by 24 percent,” writes Lewis-Stempel, “now only 10 percent of the UK population can see the Milky Way at night.” In Switzerland, the Gantrish area claims to be a “Dark Sky Park” – a place without light pollution.

Source: Blick