Tonight, on the way back from ASL class I got out of the car, looked up and found a gibbous moon high in the sky and some of the brighter stars. It still speaks to me – the night sky.
I wonder how many places are left today where a child can lie down in the velvet blackness of the night and look up into a field of stars so dense that you just know there’s someone out there looking back. I can’t remember the last time I saw a night sky unobstructed by light pollution.
Did we dream of going to the stars because we could so easily see them? Reach out hands out to them and almost touch them with our minds, if not our fingers? There are so few places left where the night sky is not paled by our own lanterns fighting off the dark. Perhaps this is the reason the dream has died.
Another Boomer Blog 
Wowwwww… I just realized how long it has been since I’ve just stood outside at night and looked up at the stars… life seems so crazy as an adult, you forget to stop and look at the things that matter.
Hi Jana, thanks for stopping by and leaving a note. Some of the best times I ever had as a child or an adult was sky-watching. In rural North Dakota and rural Idaho the sky was a huge dark dome – the vault of the heavens like the Egyptian goddess Nut stretching from horizon to horizon in all directions and in it were twinkling candles glimmering in the dark. The sky was brilliant with those tiny lights, especially on the nights of the new moon. I remember seeing the Milky way – which most folks can’t see at all now – and I learned all the major and minor constellations and the names of so many stars. I would lie on my back in the grass and stare up into the heavens and be overcome with awe. Was there someone out there, near one of those stars who was staring out into the night, looking at the light from our star? When I moved to Alaska there was a lot more light pollution in Anchorage and Fairbanks but in the winter we had the Northern Lights and I was on a telephone tree that called when the skies filled up with light. But I could go camping out in the bush and those stars still lived. Now I live north of Boston and I miss the wonder of the skies. No matter how far I drive there’s a glow of light from all the homes and businesses around me. The reason our dreams of new worlds seem to have died on the vine is that almost no one ever realizes there are “billions and billions” (although Sagan never really said that term) of stars out there.