At the sudden sound of a pheasant sending out a warning cry into the darkness, I am wide awake. I feel my body ready to spring even though it was asleep just moments ago. I look out into the night, which at this time of year doesn't get any darker than it is right now. I can see surprisingly far, but I can't see what has spooked the pheasant. Or the pheasant itself, for that matter.
I take a few deep breaths and feel my body, feel the familiar gap of the air mattress between the back of my body and the ground beneath the mattress. I look up at the crowns of the beech trees above me and follow their movements in the wind. They are still naked at the top.
I listen to the sounds of the night. The pheasant is silent again.
Is it dead? Is it waiting in the dark for a sudden killer?
There are no other birds making any sound either. It is the wind in the trees and the leaves on the forest floor that, together with the roar of the waves of Aarhus Bay, dominate the soundscape. And my own heartbeat seems to be loud. My heart is still beating fast. I can also hear my breathing. It is deep and slow.
And then there is the silence. A deep silence that somehow envelops the sounds. It's hard to put into words, but it feels mostly like soft cotton. It certainly feels soft. But cotton, upon closer examination, is not the right word. Because the sounds are not muffled by the silence. Just softly enveloped.
I feel my body as it lies here in the forest floor. It's been a long time since I last sought out the forest to spend the night. Maybe that's why the experience is particularly intense tonight.
My gaze searches for the stars behind the treetops. It is a new moon and starry. There behind the treetops is infinity. I feel small and vulnerable as I lie here in my sleeping bag. And at the same time I feel safe. I am surrounded by the space of the forest, here in the middle of infinity. I look out again. Out behind the trees. Up at the stars. Feeling my breath. My heart beating. I am alive. I feel that. Living. Right now. I look at the stars while feeling that I am alive. Stars, treetops in the wind, the wind itself, the body that breathes and pulsates. I get the experience of being connected to the surroundings. Yes, even with the stars and the entire sky as such. I think of what professor of physics and astronomy, Ulrik Ingerslev Uggerhøj, said one day at Moesgård Museum where we gave an interdisciplinary lecture about time together; ”we are all stardust”.
He really said that. ”We are all stardust.”.
I let the thought pass and return to the forest and the night sky. To my breath.
A feeling of insignificance arises. I am so small. So infinitely small. That feeling is somehow connected to a relief I have felt before.
And then comes the discomfort. Something in me definitely doesn't want to be insignificant. And to some I'm not. To one, right now I'm one of the most important things. But by and large, I'm smaller than the smallest dot. And in eternity, my life is shorter than a thousandth of a microsecond. Right now I'm alive. I feel it here in the dark night of the forest. And in a moment I'll be gone.

I must have fallen asleep to that realization. I wake up near dawn. The forest has been transformed into a concert hall where birds, invisible to my eye, have taken the stage. I lie there listening and taking in the change of scene. Gone is the quiet, dark night. A slight shock from the night's experience remains in me. I still feel my own mortality quite clearly. I turn around and look down towards the water. The horizon is red. I pack my things and go to watch the sun rise over the horizon.

Since the spring night in the forest, my work with my own awareness of death has been allowed to deepen. This also reinforces my sense of the significance of each day. Although I have been dealing with death for several years, both professionally and personally, it is as if I often pretend that it is a long time before I myself will die. As if it does not really concern me here and now. But in recent months I have more often felt the preciousness of life, felt that I could risk dying today.
The pheasant I heard in the darkness of the night must, in the instinctual moment in which it lives, have a kind of permanent death alert. A sense that the possibility of death is always close at hand.
Maybe that night in the forest I was allowed to borrow its immediate knowledge of the changing nature of life for a while? Maybe precisely because I heard its screams while I lay completely unprotected in my sleep? Maybe it was the darkness of the night that enveloped me and the infinite night sky behind the treetops that allowed me to feel it? Maybe the opportunity to recognize my own mortality is one of the reasons why I feel drawn to sleeping in nature?
I have often slept outdoors ever since I was a child. Even then, it was a gift for me to wake up at night, feel the wind on my face, and look up into infinity. But it is only in the last 10-12 years that I have sought out nature, away from home, to sleep outside. When I sleep at home in our small garden, it is as if the security of being at home also puts a kind of filter over me. When I sleep out in the forest or somewhere else in nature, I am in a way more awake in my feeling of unprotectedness. And perhaps I am therefore allowed to feel the night in a different way. In a way, is night also a kind of symbol for death? I am reminded of the Chukchi word for sun, jonathangirgin. It means life. The night is characterized by the absence of the sun. And I also think of stories from Kamchatka about people who have heard, from somewhere inside, an order to wander into the wilderness on their own. Here they have stayed for months, without a home, until they have recognized what they need to become stronger in their shamanistic practice. They learn everything they know from nature, they have told me.
My own experience is that through practice in nature I come to feel more alive. And the fact that I have now started to practice when I wake up on my sleepovers seems to reinforce this feeling. Perhaps because through the qualities of the night I get the opportunity to come a little closer to the realization that I am going to die.

This post is recorded by Hanne Linde.

Jeanette Lykkegaard
is an anthropologist and has written a PhD thesis on life and death processes among the shamanistic Chukchi people living in eastern Siberia. Jeanette is part of the team behind Kontemplation, where she has participated in a number of courses and retreats. She receives teaching and practical guidance from Hanneli Ågotsdatter and Peter Høeg.