Does anyone else here like to take walks in the middle of the night(like, 2,3,4 in the morning)? I tend to stay up very late and I often walk around my neighborhood when everyone is asleep and not a vehicle is on the road.
I’ve taken walks at all hours in the morning when its dead quiet and i’m the only soul up and about. I just love the feel of walking around in silence and looking at all different things. Sometimes i’ll wonder what some old, interesting looking house looks like inside. Or who the hell lives there. Very simple surroundings can be very enigmatic at this time of night. But i’m just curious if anyone else is weird like me…
I do the same thing. When I stay up late, I often go for a walk before bed. The middle of the night is a really nice time for walking around in peace without meeting a single person. Especially in summer, when it’s bright enough to take a walk through the forest at night.
It has been a long time, but I used to like walking in the rain late at night. Not downpours or thunderstorms, but gentle rain.
These days, with the security measures some houses have (motion sensors that detect all the way to the street), and dogs that bark at the least little thing, my neighborhood isn’t quite as receptive to those late night strolls. Twilight and early evening (say until 9 or 10) is about as late as I’d push it around here, unless I was willing to take a chance on getting shot! (I don’t think anybody around here would really shoot me or anybody just walking in the road, but you never know how skittish people can be that late at night.)
I also like the snow walks and cold-enough-to-see-your-breath walks. But for pleasure walking I like trails in parks for the solitude part. Less danger concern there, I guess.
I’ve been a chronic late night walker since 4 years ago when I lived in Baltimore. I was 19, on my own, and lonely in my apt. I liked nothing more than to go out every night and wander the same route each time. It helped me think. When I got back to NY I did the same thing. In fact, it was while on one such late night walk in NY a couple of years ago, alone and thinking, that I realized I was in love with the guy I later married.
I still do late night walks now. I live on a military base that is deserted and creepy at night. Plus there’s loads of bats here. : ) It makes it all creepy. I’m going to take a walk in a few minutes actually, because it’s almost midnight.
I tried that a long time ago, walking late at night, but got stopped by the cops. That was the closest I got to being arrested, and I was only saved by running away from them—I was damned lucky they didn’t catch me. I was scared out of my pants for at least a month after the fact and I’ll never do anything that foolish again!
To be young and hormonal…
But when I moved away from rural Florida and set up in suburban California, I loved to do things like that—and the cops didn’t stop me once. Now that I’m back in the same part of Florida, I’ve been forced to curb my nocturnal wanderings :(.
I don’t do it that often…maybe once or twice a month. It’s so much cooler (meaning temp) at night, no traffic, and the stars are out…on the right night, it’s like you’re the only person in the entire world.
Janet, Morrigaine the cat and I were close to the end of a week on a remote area of Lake Superior. We had been wind bound on a lovely sand beach for several days, so our only way out was to paddle at night, when the wind was down. The autumn night was clear, with a magnificent sky of stars winking down on us, as we made our way past the cliffs and islands of the cold lake. Then the northern lights came out, bright and coloured and dancing across the sky. The water was as smooth as glass, reflecting the show. The only sound were those of our strokes and of Morrigaine purring. A truly magical night paddle.
I used to walk a lot late at night. Being a bit of a solitudinarian, it was the only time of day (so to speak) that was really attractive to me for long rambles. It’s also about the only time that I can capture that quiet exhilaration that I often feel in dreams from being somewhere different. Walking for miles among the dark silent world is a welcome joy.
Since buying my recumbent bike, however, I’ve taken to riding instead. Nothing like whispering down a unfamiliar country road at 4:30 am, with naught for company but the stars and the crickets.
I would like to, but I have had too many bad experiences being out alone late at night that I stopped it years ago. (I’ve had men follow me on foot, in cars, chase me, drunkards hollering at me, police asking me what I’m doing and telling me to go home).
I don’t know what it is with this area I’m in now, but we seem to have a high number of people who are completely out of touch with reality and I’d rather not run into them at 2 am.
I would like to from time to time, but I used to live in the suburbs where people wandering the streets after dark were routinely stopped by the cops (a bunch of us were hanging out in my driveway–just talking, quietly–at, oh, 11pm, when I was 18ish and the cops stopped to bother us) and hassled. And the apartment complex I live in now isn’t the best place to be wandering around late at night.