SEPTEMBER 15, 2024 – Aging seems to increase my amazement. Late one evening recently we sat with friends out on the dock for conversation and a bit of star-gazing. The first quarter moon had already set, leaving the Milky Way and constellations in full command of the celestial stage. I’d brought out two sets of binoculars—a relatively small one that has been kicking around the cabin for years and a brand new large pair for astronomical viewing, which pair was my birthday present to me. Even with the naked eye the star show was spectacular. Through the lenses of the small binocs, the show jumped to a level many times the unaided version. But when I put the “observatory” set to my eyes . . . “Holy cow!” I exclaimed with verbal imagination provisionally suppressed by my amazement.
It was not the first time I’d been awed by the stars of heaven, but my point here is that it won’t be my last. In fact, each time I look at the stars in a clear sky free of competing moonlight and far from urban light pollution, I am ever more impressed by what I see. Surely if more people had access to pristine nighttime sky and simply gazed at the firmament for as little as 10 or 15 seconds every so often, much of our earthbound angst and anxiety would fade—and drastically so by cumulative effect.
To our company on the dock, I attempted to express my inexpressible amazement (beyond “Holy cow.”) In truth, however, I wasn’t sure what was more amazing—the view of a mind-blowing number of bright stars or . . . the existence of planet earth as it has evolved to the present. Most astronomers accept the theoretical possibility and practical probability that other planets harboring “intelligent life” exist out there in the cosmos. Fine, but as far as I know, no such planets have been identified among the gazillion stars that a person can see from the end of our dock (or from horizon to horizon when night-cruising on the pontoon). Even if we have “company” somewhere, by no measure is it close enough to be meaningful. Among all the hydrogen and helium burning perpetually in the form of stars, with a few rocky or gaseous planets, planet-satellites, asteroids and comets sprinkled among the balls of fire, the earth is in its very own class. Having evolved far beyond the appearance of single-cell organisms 3.8 billion years ago to where we are today, life on earth is the stuff of “science fiction” in the extreme, n’est-ce pas?!
Once I transferred my amazement from the heavens to earth, I experienced “amazement” overload. Isn’t the sky-high mighty white pine just behind the dock and visible far out on the lake—the tree that I distinctly remember being four feet high when I was four years old—every bit as amazing as a (ho-hum) star? But then there’s Brahms violin concerto. Where else in the universe could we find something to match that? Make that 100s of amazing violinists around the world who can play it—amazingly well. And the monarch butterfly that I watched for several minutes as it flitted up and down and all around across the grounds at the Red Cabin yesterday afternoon, and two more monarchs fluttering over a boulevard garden of zinnias along my power walk today. Where else in the universe does such delicate winged beauty fly?
Suddenly, all the words and works of humankind flooded my consideration, as I gave thought to the bottomless reservoir of life on earth. Bringing it all home today was our eight-year-old who amazed me when she asked me to search YouTube for a recording of Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again—the British song that she made a hit in 1943 when the Greatest Generation was fighting WW II! Certainly Illiana’s great-grandparents would have been amazed to learn that 79 years later, a young kid among their descendants is asking for the song.
Then late this afternoon came le piece de resistance: a performance of “Moya” by ZipZap Circus at the Children’s Theater Company adjacent to the Minneapolis Art Institute. This 10-member troupe from South Africa competed with the best of Circe du Soleil. Each of the 13 acts of artistic acrobatics, a meld of dance and gymnastics, with eye-popping juggling routines and unicycle virtuosity tossed in just for kicks, was . . . well, in a word . . . amazing.
After the show, I pondered how impossible it would be to list but a fraction of the countless human accomplishments I’ve seen, heard, or read about, but of far greater magnitude, the “countless x 10 to the power of infinity” other feats and achievements of our species. Then, suddenly, yet again—a state of amazement swept over me as I considered the extent of my oblivion.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
