I dug my fingers into the soft dirt near the roots of the Hortensia bush. It was black soil, the kind chewed over endlessly by worms in the shade. Passing through the worm’s body, day after day, night after night, until the dirt is like moist powder ejected from a fine-grind espresso machine. I fingered handfuls and then brought them up to smear over my face. The skin produces oils that gleam in the night. I knew operators who had died because of the shine their skin made in the dark. I couldn’t bear the thought of a tombstone that read: killed because his skin was too shiny. So I’d do what I could to make sure that didn’t happen. I smeared well, pushing the dirt deep into the skin with my fingertips. Then I did the back of my hands, rubbing the dirt in slow little circles, until my exposed skin had no shine, and was a dull matte brown.

For a guy who had to wait all night in the rain, I already felt lucky.

The stone wall had a shelf. One of the slabs protruded a couple of inches and I was able to back myself into the wall and have that narrow shelf take my weight. It was enough for me to feel comfortable and safe. From there I had an excellent view of the house directly ahead. Left and right were clear. There was nothing going on, except for the rain, which wasn’t so obviously a case of good luck.

The weather got worse during the first hour. From a couple drops every now and again, to a persistent light drizzle. The rain wasn’t good for hearing. I wouldn’t be able to rely upon my ears to tell me if something was going on. The patter was constant and masked other sounds that would have been heard otherwise, like boots creeping through the undergrowth. By the second hour of the night, my head and shoulders were wet. So I wasn’t lucky with the weather.

But I did feel lucky about the night. Because technically speaking, in late June there is no night. Technically speaking there are three degrees of twilight, but no night. When the sun passes below the horizon, light still refracts off the microscopic particles in the atmosphere. That’s called civil twilight, in which you can pretty much see almost as well as during the day. Next up is nautical twilight, in which a guy on a boat can still see pretty far, but a guy in the forest struggles with the shadows. But once the sun slips lower than that, eighteen degrees or so, you are in astronomical twilight, and true night isn’t far away. Thing is, because of the way the earth leans in late June to early July, the sun doesn’t slip lower than eighteen degrees below the horizon.