Hey, it's Vanessa. I know I don't need to tell you this, but the most important presidential election of our lifetime is mere weeks away.

The two candidates represent starkly different realities for the US going forward,

and there are lots of down ballot races that will make big

differences as well. So please do not sit this one out. Make sure you're

registered to vote and know how you're going to do it. There's information to

help you do this at vote save America.com. That's

Vote save America.com. Hub and Spokes. Audio Collective. You're listening to nocter. I'm Vanessa Lowe.

You're listening to nocter. I'm Vanessa Lowe. About nine years ago, solidly into my first year of making nocturn, I decided to go on a solo walk at night and maybe make an episode out of it. Perhaps you've listened to that

episode into Under Through from July of 2015. I wasn't planning just a nighttime walk

around my relatively safe neighborhood.

What I was planning was a walk in a pretty remote wooded area down a winding path to a very secluded

bay beach out near the Point Rees National Seashore in Northern California.

And while I intended to record the whole process of the walk, I had a destination.

I wanted to get to this little beach and sit down in the dark and revel in the beauty or solitude or something,

but I definitely wanted to get somewhere.

It turns out that that episode wasn't really about going for a walk. It was about overcoming fear, which

spoiler alert, I didn't. Back in 2015 I had certain ideas about the night and I was actually pretty new to it.

And my walk that night could easily have been inspired by a literal interpretation of the

Nelson Mandela quote, I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

Over a hundred episodes later, my experience of night has deepened and grown, and I have a much

more nuanced idea of what it means to triumph over fear.

More about that later, but first, in honor of the approaching 10-year anniversary of

...