Explore At Night

To make an old well explored trail new again, do it at night. In the dark, a trail can seem like an alien world, when all the nocturnal animals are out, and little noises keep you on your toes.

Lit Trails

An easy night trail is one that is lit. Bring the daylight into the night. Trails that are commonly lit are skiing trails – both downhill and cross-country. The inner cross-country ski trails are usually the only ones lit.

Full Moon

A bit harder is going out on a full moon lit night. On a night lit by the full moon, once your eyes are fully adapted to the dark, it is rather easy to see where you are going. However looking at the full moon may cause some discomfort, as it can be so bright.

Night-Vision Goggles

For those with money, one option is night-vision goggles. Night-vision goggles are expensive to buy, but you may find a way to give night-vision goggles a try perhaps though a course or an outfitter. Night-vision goggles in addition to making the night bright, will make living creatures and inanimate objects appear strange and different. Our eyes work by detecting visible light from the Sun reflected off objects and living creatures. Night-vision goggles work in the infrared, and detect blackbody radiation we emit. Blackbody radiation depends on temperature. The higher the temperature, the greater the radiation emitted and the shorter the average wavelength is. A hot stove element glows red when it is giving off blackbody radiation.

Amateur Astronomy

If you wish to stay in one spot on a moonless night, your night sport is astronomy.

Nightwalking

The most radical way of exploring the night is going for a hike on moonless night without any aid except for a training aid. At this point you might think this is crazy. Not so. Walking in near total darkness without fear is possible. The key is to see without moving your eyes.

Our eyes have two separate vision systems. The one we are most familiar with is central vision. With central vision our eyes focus on an object. Central vision allows you to see sharp details in color. The other system is peripheral vision. Peripheral vision detects movement. Unlike central vision, colors and sharp details are not seen. But peripheral vision does work under extremely low light levels.

In the daytime, central vision dominates. Peripheral vision is there to warn us of sudden movements and give central vision something to focus on. At nighttime in moderate light levels, the two systems work more or less together. However, at extremely low light levels, we still try to use our central vision system, even though it is nearly useless under the conditions. The failure of our central vision system could be the heart of our deep routed fear of the dark.

To conquer this fear you need to turn off the central vision system and let the peripheral vision take over completely. To do this requires training. You need to focus and rest your eyes on an object directly in front of you. Hundreds of years ago, this meant staring at a star directly in front of you. A better method invented by two guys from Taos, New Mexico about ten years ago involves a modified baseball cap. They attached a foot-long metal rod with a fluorescent bead on its end to the bill of a baseball cap. All you have to do is stare at the bead.

With practice this method of nightwalking enables you to see well even on the darkest of nights and has a remarkable bonus. Strong emotions such as fear, anger, worry, doubt, depression are just not felt while in the “peripheral state”.

http://www.greatoutdoors.org/oe/1000.htm Short introduction

Caves & Underwater: Without Light

Beyond nightwalking are environments without light. Caves and the deep underwater are two environments that can be completely dark – so dark that even an owl’s eyes are useless. In these environments, you can use either a flashlight or an echolocation device. Unfortunately, echolocation devices for humans are not very sophisticated, although blind people do use them somewhat.

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~husn/BRAIN/vol1/echo.html

Questions

Is peripheral vision biking & skiing possible? Likely not for biking. Skiing, because of its slower speed, maybe.

More Variations

- Underwater caves with flashlights, technical diving
- Underwater at a specific depth that you can use nightwalking principles, need considerable time underwater to benefit. The correct depth will vary greatly with water clarity.
- Future idea: brain implanted echolocation device.
- Echolocation, in theory, could be accomplished in many ways. These ways may or may not prove useful.
   - With sound: frequency, time delay, volume, sound pattern
   - With light: color, pattern, position.
       - Similar to night-vision goggles, but with different information on the screen
   - With touch: hear you wear a suit which feeds you impulses to your skin
   - With smell: perhaps usefu