When I set out to learn the constellations in my early 40s, I had no idea that it would take me on a journey that would change my whole world. What began as a quest to teach my kids how to identify more than the moon and Big Dipper ended up luring me into a deep and beautiful world of curiosity, awe, and inspiration. The more I learned, the more my perspectives changed, and the more I connected with the natural world around me.
I’m only eight years into this extraordinary journey under the night sky, and it never gets old. The thin crescent moon in the western sky never fails to take my breath away. The awe of seeing the rings of Saturn in my telescope never diminishes, no matter how many times I see it. Watching the Milky Way rise overhead in an exceptionally dark location never stops surprising me.
I had no idea that frequent interactions with the night sky would be so life-altering. I didn’t have a dramatic moment that pivoted my life forever, but rather, I felt these changes bit by bit over time. I’m convinced that the night self remains dormant, waiting for us to step out of the comfort zones of our brightly lit homes and the dopamine-driving screens of our devices. As soon as we step outside into the darkness, an incredible world waits to be discovered. And if we look and listen, it will teach us new things.
Here are some of the ways that eight years of frequent stargazing and nighttime experiences have changed me forever.
I HAVE GREATER SEASONAL AWARENESS
I grew up in the Northwest with four distinct seasons embedded in my relationship with nature. Those cycles were turned on their head when I moved to the Sonoran Desert, where the seasons are Summer and January. Over time, I learned my new seasons and associated each month with what was happening in nature.
Learning the seasonal constellations added a new dimension to the seasonal changes around me. I know to anticipate the arrival of the Pleiades and Orion in October when the temperature finally falls below a hundred degrees. I associate the appearance of Virgo in April with the intoxicating smell of citrus blossoms floating on the air. When Sagittarius brings the core of the Milky Way into view in June, I know the meteorologists will soon declare the official start of the monsoon season.
I’M ENCHANTED BY NATURE AT NIGHT
The summer nights of my childhood were filled with magic, and the only thing that could break the spell was mom calling us in for bed. The games we played in the dark with the neighborhood kids had a touch of mystery. We ran through neighbor’s yards under the cover of darkness, invented new forms of tag and hide-and-seek, and hid from car headlights as if they were alien space ships.
Adulthood transforms us into different nocturnal animals than the ones we embodied as children. We retreat indoors to close the curtains, flip on all the artificial lights, and drown ourselves in the lights of our televisions and smartphones.
In my quest to learn the night sky, I sat on my patio in the evening twilight and challenged myself to identify the first star that winked on based on its position. While I watched the sky grow darker, the birds beat their wings as they got comfortable in their nests for the night. The bats swooped over the swimming pool, gobbling up their dinner of mosquitos and other twilight insects. The moths tickled the white flowers, pollinating them as they extracted sweet nectar and the geckos chirped under the eaves of the house.
The more time I spend outside in the dark, the less I fear it. The less I fear it, the more I crave it. When the evenings aren’t blistering hot, I love to take long walks around the neighborhood or hike nearby trails with as little assistance from a flashlight as possible.
I’VE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH CULTURAL STAR KNOWLEDGE
The first Native American star story I heard lit a fire in my imagination. It was a Cree story about the Pleiades with Grandmother Spider and Star Woman. For the first time, that pretty cluster of stars came to life with a story that took me on a journey through a portal to the other side of the universe and opened my mind to an alternate origin story. I sought out more and more indigenous star stories until wide sections of the sky transformed into a stage full of settings, plots, and characters.
But the indigenous star stories are more than myths and legends told to children in front of a campfire before bed. They often contain valuable information that the storytellers pass down from generation to generation. The stories inform them of when to plant crops, when to harvest, and when to hunt certain animals in each season. The appearance of certain stars reminded them of stories with instructions for seasonal festivals, ceremonies, and rituals.
We have lost our connection to the night sky and how it can guide us throughout the year. We turn to our smartphones to tell time, to know the month and season, to navigate, to find a weather forecast, and to distinguish a planet from a star. Cultural star knowledge has awakened a desire in me to connect the dots between nature, the landscape, and the stars from where I live.
I EMBRACE A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON DEATH
I listened to Sir Patrick Stewart’s voice narrate a planetarium show about the birth and death of stars. The dome filled with imaginative scenes of the inside of a nebula, the remains of an exploded star. In the remains, dust and gas coalesced into new stars that illuminated the nebula, making it visible to us through telescopes, and in the case of the Orion Nebula, the naked eye.
My brain tried to comprehend the unfathomable amount of time it takes for celestial processes to run their course. I thought about our Sun, an average star, and how infinitely lucky we are to exist and to be aware of, not only our existence, but our inevitable death. We all die. The constellations drift apart and stars die. Planets die. This is the unavoidable outcome of existing.
I walked out of that show with a whole new perspective of death, even though that’s not what the show was about. Death no longer felt like a personal assault or an unfair end. It’s what all things do. A star dies and shares its components with the rest of its galaxy, contributing the building blocks for life on earth. A human dies, and when buried naturally, shares its components with the soil and all that grows from it.
The planet lives on. The universe lives on. It’s a beautiful exchange of star stuff from one celestial body to a human body to a planet.
