Author: Annette Lees

Every 24 hours, the Earth rolls into its own vast shadow and darkness floods across the land and sea. In a 1600-kilometre-long gliding plumb-line down the length of New Zealand, our beaches, towns, cities, farms, forests, lakes and mountains sink into shadow. In the darkness that follows, landscapes become altered, mysterious and charge with potency.

To research this book, the author spent several years in the company of bats, owls, moths, singing crickets and seabirds, and the people who study them, to learn more about what goes on outdoors once the sun goes down.

The result is After Dark: Walking into the nights of Aotearoa, published by Potton and Burton in 2021.  Beside the natural history tales, it is filled with human night stories: tales of war stealth, fireworks and ghosts; nights lit by candles, lanterns, fires and lighthouses; night surfing, night fishing, night diving and night skiing; mountains walking in the dark and night navigation on ocean voyaging waka.