Prompt 321. Moondancing After Midnight
& Libby DeLana on unexpected encounters
Hi friend,
After finishing another round of chemo last week, I’ve spent most of the past seven days in bed. I’ve been sleeping so much—sometimes long hours, sometimes fitfully—that everything is a blur of waking and sleeping. An exception was Wednesday night, when I woke at three a.m. feeling generally miserable. Jon was asleep beside me, and I didn’t want to wake him, so I got up, thinking I’d go to another room to toss and turn. But then I noticed the glow.
At first, I thought we’d left the exterior lights on, but I quickly realized it was the moon, showering silver light on everything. A couple of days past full, it was still bulbous and bright, almost fluorescent. I thought, It’s three a.m. Why not lean into the strangeness and magic of this hour? So I roused River and Sunshine (Lentil was deep under the covers and would’ve been very upset if I’d dragged her from her comfy nest). Though they were sleepy and seemed a bit confused, they happily followed me outside, and we set off toward the hill behind the house.
I felt a little mischievous, like I was sneaking out. I was in my pajamas, a quilt wrapped around my shoulders. It was bitterly cold, and my breath plumed as we made our way up toward the woods and onto a little winding path lined by fallen trees. The dogs are always delighted and exuberant on a walk, racing off and then cutting back, tearing around in circles. But that night, they were more solemn and trotted calmly by my side. It felt like we were on the verge of some witchy moondance ceremony.
It’s not a very long path, and we soon reached the end, where a clearing overlooks a small creek, now mostly dry and filled with brambles, with dustings of snow here and there. I stood still, scanned the woods, and felt a thrumming fullness. With illness, you’re totally at the whim of your body. You’re always having your plan upturned, your schedule scrambled, and even if you know the interruption is temporary, it can feel like you’re always going to feel awful and every single thing will be insurmountably hard. Stuck in bed, struggling to do the most basic things, you can feel really isolated. But on that short stroll, standing there in the spotlight of the moon, I felt seen and reconnected to a greater stream of living. I also felt adventurous in a way I haven’t in a long time. I felt wild.
Embracing paradox has been my work these last few years, and it’s moments like these that show me how—just such small meanderings. As the poet Theodore Roethke writes in “The Waking,”
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.
And with that, I’ll turn today’s guest essay and prompt—called “Two Coyotes” by Libby DeLana. It’s excerpted from her book Do Walk, where she shares stories and lessons learned from the daily walk she has taken each morning since 2011. May it inspire your own peregrinations, be they morning, noon, or long after midnight.
Sending love,
Suleika
Some items of note—
Our next meeting of the Hatch, our virtual creative hour for paid subscribers, is happening next Sunday, January 26 from 1-2 pm ET. Carmen Radley will be hosting this time, sharing a poem and short lecture. It’s an inspiring and edifying way to spend a Sunday—as one community member said of one of Carmen’s talks, “I learned more in ten minutes than I often do in a full MFA class.” I hope you can join us!
In our fifth annual New Year’s Journaling Challenge, we celebrated and cultivated magic, mystery, and creative alchemy. So many of you commented on how powerful and transformative it was—how it allowed you to notice beauty in surprising places, even in the hardest things. If you missed it, you can always start now! You can find all the reflections and prompts here.
Prompt 321. Two Coyotes by Libby DeLana
One morning, late in the autumn of 2011, I struggled to get out of bed. I hadn’t slept well. I wanted to stay put. I hadn’t been doing my morning walk for long, but had come to know that walking was my best bet. There is always something that happens on a morning walk that improves the upcoming day. I’ve since learned that the days I don’t want to go are in fact the days I most “need” to go.
The morning before, I thought I had seen two coyotes at the end of the street. So, driven by curiosity, not commitment or joy, I meandered downstairs to get my gear on and headed out the door. It was just after 5am and pitch-black out, with a cold sliver of a moon and a cloud layer that made it feel as if there was no light in the world. I waited until I got to the end of the street before I turned on my headlamp, because there is something about gently, very gently, easing into the silent darkness of a walk. By keeping my headlamp off it felt as if I was quietly entering the morning. The stillness of the dark felt like a hug.
It’s interesting, there is a quiet, determined community up at this hour. I saw a familiar runner at the top of the street. We all recognize each other but don’t really know anything about one another. We nod and wave, it feels like a secret handshake when our paths cross.
Later, after passing my familiar morning squad, I saw the quick-moving shadow of something larger than a dog… It was the coyote. The discreet nature of how this animal exists in the world is fascinating. It made me pause. Humans are so loud, so dominant, so obvious. We exist in our ecosystems flamboyantly and overtly. The coyote, however, is intimately integrated into its private world. Quietly powerful, discreet in its movement and impact. There were lessons to be learned from this morning visitor. My morning walk offers up many a teacher. I was glad curiosity got the better of me.
Your prompt for the week:
Write about a surprising fellowship you have with someone (or something) else. How, when, and where did you cross paths? What did this encounter teach you? How did it widen your perspective or enrich your life?
If you’d like, you can post your response to today’s prompt in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals. As a reminder, we love seeing your work inspired by the Isolation Journals, but to preserve this as a community space, we request no promotion of outside projects.
Today’s Contributor—
Libby DeLana is the creator and co-host of the podcast This Morning Walk™ with Alex Elle, the author of Do Walk (Do Books, 2021), and a leading voice on the emotionally transformative power of walking. A compelling new voice and face of aging, Libby began a career as a fashion model in her late fifties, working with some of the industry’s most respected photographers and becoming a brand ambassador for Hoka and Fjallraven. A walker who has circumnavigated the earth, Libby is also an aspiring pilot, rookie fly fisher, and mum to two smart, kind men.
For more paid subscriber benefits, see—
Lighting the Way, a very special installment of my advice column Dear Susu, where a reader asked for words of wisdom to illuminate a path through the wilderness, and hundreds of you responded with little points of light
On Creative Surprise, a video replay of my Studio Visit with the writer and illustrator Mari Andrew, where we talked about life interruptions and paying attention and seeing the magic in the mundane
Rumi & Paradox, a week of poems and prompts to help us learn to hold the brutal and beautiful facts of life in the same palm
Our Isolation Journal No. 1—
The other day I saw a comment from a community member who had filled her special edition Isolation Journal to the last page and wondered if we had more—and we do! Get yours at the link below before they’re gone!
A cinematic quality to your moonish meandering accompanied by hounds. What a deeply precious moment Suleika. What a gift. Thank you for letting us peep inside.
I read Orbital by Samantha Harvey over Christmas while suffering from terminal flu (actually I felt furious, flu and cancer. Eff that!). And since then I am like a 5 year old about the night sky. Is that a star? A planet? What, actually Venus? Stopppp. But there they sit, winking and guiding us away from the trials on Earth and up to the cosmos, the beauty. Libby, thank you for sharing the idea of a ritual walk. Gosh 5am though! I am waiting for results of a scan to check on my lovely lungs. A walk, a frosty walk, yes. Thank you all here for seeing the beauty in the bricks. ✨
Your words are luminous, a perfect echo of that moonlit walk you so vividly describe. It’s rare to read something that feels both deeply personal and profoundly universal, but you’ve captured it here — the strange magic of the in-between hours, when the world is quiet enough to hear the pulse of life itself.
I love the image of you wrapped in a quilt, breath clouding the air, River and Sunshine transformed into solemn moonlit companions. That “thrumming fullness” you describe resonates — how illness, for all its cruelty, can paradoxically open up moments of connection to something vast and ineffable. It’s as though the universe slipped you a reminder in that silver glow: you are still wild, still part of the great rhythm.
And Roethke’s lines! They settle in like an exhalation, the perfect companion to your musings. “This shaking keeps me steady” — isn’t that the crux of it all? How the very things that unmoor us can also root us in deeper truths?
Your story reminded me of a night years ago when I found myself awake at an odd hour. It had been a hard day. On a whim, I grabbed a coat and stepped outside, where I found a frost-covered world under a clear, starry sky. I wandered aimlessly, my breath forming tiny clouds, until I stumbled upon a frozen pond. It glowed faintly in the starlight, and I just stood there, overwhelmed by the quiet beauty of it. I’d been feeling so disconnected and burnt out, but in that moment, I felt oddly whole, as if the universe had gently nudged me to pay attention, to be present, to breathe.
Thank you for sharing your own moonlit pilgrimage — it inspires me to step into my own small meanderings with more wonder and maybe a little quilt-wrapped mischief.