The Night Sky

I saw the most amazing thing last night. I went outside to let my dog out and when I looked up, I could see the sky.

The real true, starry sky with constellations and everything.

When I lived at my parent’s house, this wasn’t such an unusual thing, and I used to sit outside, even on the unbearably cold snowy nights to look at the stars. I like looking up and being able to piece together individual stars into patterns, like a puzzle. I worked once at a summer camp and every night it was the most incredible thing, the entire night sky, open for viewing without so much as a neon sign to disrupt it. There was one night the sky burst into streaming banners of color and I laid on the beach and the reflection of the Aurora Borealis on the water made me feel like I was floating in space.

When I packed up my things and moved to college in the city, I left behind all of my astronomy books and my star chart and resigned myself to complaining here and there about missing the stars. These days when I look up at the sky, if I can even see it over the light from the garages in the parking lot of the building, it is either a milky gray or else there is an orange haze covering most of the horizon like an ugly urban sunrise.

Don’t misunderstand me. I like the city. I live in one of the nicest suburbs and I am 15 minutes from practically any store you can think of, a stone’s throw from the real down town and its myriad of funky bookstores, restaurants and farmer’s markets, but in exchange I have been cut off from my one-time source of real enjoyment, The Night Sky.

It’s like a friend you’ve missed for so long you’ve practically forgotten that they exist. So tonight I say: Andromeda, Orion, Cassiopeia, my old friends, how I’ve missed you. Let’s not wait so long to meet up again. I’ll be looking for you on the next camping trip.