Talk Thursday - Heavenly Bodies

Enlightened Fairy had a great idea, Talk Thursday. I want to blog more, but often am clueless as to what I should blog. I specifically enjoy those 12am epiphanies, but darn it’s not 1234am. So Talk Thursday is perfection. This week’s title…

Heavenly Bodies

I come from a camping family. We hiked during the days in the desert, woods, forest, or beach wherever we were camping that trip, and at night we sat out by a campfire and enjoyed quality family time. I miss those campfires, the s’mores, banana boats, singing, and the stars.

In my family each child became a scout. Unlike most other kids, I was never ashamed of being in Scouts; I loved being a Scout. Two weeks every summer was spent at Skyland ranch in the San Jacinto Mountains, next to time with my grandfather, it was the highlight of my childhood. In scouting I learned about the constellations, some of the Greek myths that went with each cluster of stars. Away from the light pollution of Los Angeles the stars were brilliant, the sky seemingly jam packed with stars In the The Milky Way a gentle white swath across the sky studded with bigger, brighter stars that sparkled in the night.

Each night if we didn’t spend time around a campfire singing folk songs, we were in a meadow lying on our backs watching stars that seemed so close you could touch them. One night, probably in my fifth or sixth year there, we were laying side by side when a huge shooting star arced across the sky from northwest to southeast. The quiet whispers immediately turned to awed oohs of wonder as each girl in the meadow drank in the vision of that star shooting across our vision. And then it was gone; each of us secretly wishing for another, just so we could live it again.

On the Oregon coast, oft times, the sky is clouded over and the stars are hidden from view. But on the clear nights I can see Orion hung in the sky just above my house. The Big and Little Dippers with Polaris navigating the sky. Venus hangs just over the ocean, Mars rides in the eastern sky, and Cassiopeia spends half the night on her head.

The stories have faded from those nights spent around campfires and in the meadow. I can’t identify as many constellations as I could forty years ago. But the memory of that shooting star still burns bright. I can’t remember who was lying there with me as we watched, but I can still feel the grass in the meadow under my back soft and poky. I still remember the coolness of the air just above the ground as the temperature hit dew point. And I still remember the awe of that star.

Sith,
Cele