When did we lose track of the stars?
I grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota. On clear nights I went outside to look for constellations. I do not remember feeling struck by the sky then — perhaps because it was always there. What I remember is feeling at peace under it. Curious. Full of wonder. Grounded. I did not have those words as a child, but I had the feeling.
I am not sure when I lost track of the starry night sky.
I do know that I was gifted a reminder on a camping trip in Utah with my husband and our boys. All of us were awestruck — by the vastness, and by the sheer overwhelming volume of stars. It was not familiar in the way it had been when I was a child. It felt like a return to familiar — as if the experience had been missing, and I had not fully appreciated how much I missed it.
“But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)
Last weekend I had that treat again in northern Minnesota. Three of my closest girlfriends and I were on a houseboat in Voyageurs National Park on a moonless night, slapping mosquitoes and waiting for the forecasted meteor shower to begin. As the four of us moved and shifted, looking for a comfortable position to hold our upward gaze and adjusting our clothing and beach towels to thwart the determined, bloodthirsty mosquitoes, we murmured things like “this is amazing,” “wow,” “this is incredible,” and “there!” as a meteor flashed by. We remained there for hours — itchy, welted, and all transfixed by our feeling of awe.
The photos above are from my phone, pointed straight up, night mode on and exposure turned all the way up. They show a fraction of what we saw, but they represent a shared and treasured memory between the four of us.
Psychologists who study awe describe a “small self” — the sense of being one small thing under something vast — and find that it tends to steady people rather than diminish them. Unaware of this literature, my girlfriends said just that. Lying on the top deck of our houseboat, we spoke about that sense of regained perspective, of our place within the greater universe. It felt steady and comforting.
In November I will be in Moab for The Poetics of ACT with Kelly Wilson. The new moon falls on November 9, the first night of the event, and Arches National Park is eight minutes from the venue. The desert will be dry, clear, and free of mosquitoes.
Read more about Awe and Dark Skies.