‘Light at Hopper House’
December 10, 2018
By Arthur H. Gunther III
(also on Facebook)
Our ancestors, living in caves, then huts, then small cabins, all without much benefit of light — there were no Andersen double-glazed, energy-efficient windows then — must have grabbed, mentally, emotionally, at any sliver of brilliant shining as does a young child marvel at a big, dripping icicle. What power there is in light, the ancestors must have thought.
In time, first with the light of day to hunt and then with the light of fire to cook, there began a dawn of illuminating existence. We are now all travelers of that first light though enough in humankind have always sought to extinguish it for others.
Nor has society fully taken the gift of light and hopped on it to our dreams. The harnessing of light could end poverty on earth through free energy, clean water, crops, but we allow the ministers of darkness, be they greed, power, prejudice, hatred or just plain evil, to deny a share.
The rays of light cast through a window can be mesmerizing to a child, staring through his daydreams, the same young being decades later, a life gone by, grasping at the same light in his/her long hours of reflection.
Dawn brings newness with the return of light just as dusk and light’s withdrawal tells us to cozy ourselves to sleep, to rest if we can, with the promise of return.
Perhaps day-dreaming is mostly light, the horse in the sky we choose to zoom away on in a gallop or to amble in a meadow. It is a gift, our ticket to ride.
The writer is a retired newspaperman. ahgunther@yahoo.com