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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

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.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, I remember those "can't see the stars" complaints :) Glad you got to enjoy them by surprise.

Kim L said...

lauryn-thanks I did enjoy them a bunch.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the night you, Lauryn, Andy and I drove out to the edge of the 'burbs (Andover??)and watched the Northern Lights on top of your Buick. Oh, and didn't Boris join us too?

Wow, that was eons ago.

Kim L said...

G-Yes it was forever ago, wasn't it? Teehee I think Boris did join us. See it just goes to show my point, you remember the night you get to see the Northern Lights.