STARRY NIGHT

July 13, 2020 – The other night I stepped out onto our dock to behold the heavens. I do so often and each time become ever more awestruck. High-powered binoculars multiply the starry display into mind-blowing proportions. I think about ordinary physics—time, light, distance; about astrophysics—the make-up of those burning lights. I think about how ancients reacted to the stars and how humankind’s curiosity leads to discovery. I think about the beauty of creation and the paradox of my apprehension of such beauty coupled with my insignificance within the universe.

I feel grounded, if you will, knowing that despite all the changes on earth, the heavens appear as they have since the dawn of civilization; since millions of years before that.

My earliest recollection of stars dates to when I was three or four. Dad had elected to extend our weekend stay at the cabin as long as possible—through Sunday night—on the self-promise, no doubt, that we would leave before sun-up Monday morning to allow time for the drive home and a switch of clothes before the opening bell at his office.

All of us—parents, grandparents, sisters, and I—liked extra time at the cabin; none of us liked the extra price of having to wake up at such an unnatural hour.  Dad made the most of it, however. In loading the car, he noticed the stars’ pre-dawn finale. He raced back into the cabin and summoned everyone to behold the wonder outside. To quicken our response, he snatched me up in his arms.

I’ll never forget the instant Dad pointed upward through an opening in the trees and said, “Look!” Perhaps I’d never been awake late—or early—enough to have beheld the starlit sky. Or maybe I’d not been old enough for stars to register upon my mental canvas with so much of its framework yet to be formed. But at that place in that moment, I “looked,” I saw, and I marveled.

During what must have been the following summer, I was allowed to join my two older sisters in camping out on the sundeck of our family’s house back in Anoka. As the first stars began to appear, our parents laid out air mattresses and sleeping bags, rounded up a couple of flashlights and bottles of mosquito repellent, and bade us a good night. Their bedroom adjoined the deck, so if need be, we could find safety easily enough.  The need never arose.

I remember lying there—the three of us, eyes wide open to the starry heavens. (Our younger sister was not yet initiated; her turn would come after we moved to our new house, fitted with an even bigger sundeck, designed specifically, I was sure, for better stargazing.) Everyone knew the “Big Dipper” and each of us wanted first dibs at pointing it out to the other two siblings. But then the real fun would begin—connecting the dots to make up our own constellations.

The next chance you get, look, see . . . and marvel.

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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson