Rowers are creatures that come out in the dark. Well, actually, they come out at all different times in all different kinds of weather. But when it’s still dark in the early morning and you strap lights onto your boat you’ll meet a quiet concentration on the water. There’s a slipping by of other bow lights, wisps of silhouetted figures sliding across a dark tableau and a few disembodied voices out there that alert you to the presence of other rowers.

1,2,3 — push off!

Once underway your focus is where it always should be — internalized, yet with one eye in the back of your head for river traffic. There’s far less visual distraction in this pre-dawn darkness, however, so the rhythm and glide of the row are almost all you need to know. In fact, you may be lulled into thinking you’re a much better, faster rower than you are because you can’t so readily see whatever you may be doing wrong and how far you have or haven’t traveled!

Some bridges suspend arcs of colored neon that trace the steel webbing in the dark, thus defining entry points and  guiding your passage through. It’s not quite like sighting the stars from a sailboat but there is an equivalent need to always know your position without the sunlight splashed rivers of daylight.

__________________________

Brush Strokes poster“Midnight Row” Rowing in darkness filtered through moonlight