Midsummer’s Night Musings

This past summer, we got a puppy.  She is a sweet English golden retriever.  It has been fun, wild and exhausting.  I forgot that having a puppy is a lot like having a baby. And my youngest son is 8, so it has been quite a while since we have had a baby in the house. Now, the gates are back out, the cords are all hidden, and the Lego’s are picked up off the floor.  

There is also the getting up at night.  Which has been the hardest part.  I am not a night owl and I don’t necessarily like to be outside when it’s dark, unless I am sitting in front of a campfire. 

But every night, I have found myself stepping outside at the darkest hour.  At first, I can’t see a thing. Partly because the boys keep playing with the flashlight and we can never find it when we actually need it.  So, I take a deep breath, try to forget about the flashlight and let my eyes adjust. 

The air smells thick and sweet at 2am.  Like things growing, like wet soil. I hear the hum of grasshoppers in the weeds.

I rub my eyes.  I make sure Penny is doing her business.  Then while I wait, I look up.  This is my favorite part.  The part that makes the nightly trip outside worth it.  To witness the sky full of stars.

All of these incredible night sky pictures within this post were taken by my neighbor Mike Neumann.

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, where street lamps abound.  I didn’t see many stars.  We had fireflies to enjoy instead.  But here in Northern Michigan, we live out in the country a little bit, near lakes and outside the city.  In our particular neighborhood we don’t have street lamps or sidewalks. 

One of my neighbors is actually a hobby astronomer.  He spends entire nights outside with his high-powered telescopes and cameras looking, searching and taking incredible photos.   All the pictures included here were taken by him!  I always try to remember to turn off my outside lights before we go to bed.  I know he needs it really dark to do his work. 

When I am standing there, I always look for the big and little dipper first. They are the easiest for me to identify.  Then I strain my eyes to see if I can catch any hint of the northern lights.  I never do.  I have only seen them once when I was younger.  It was pretty incredible.

It brings back memories of summer camp when I was a teen. 

How we would all pile into a rented bus for the weekend and make our way up north. The camp we stayed at was nestled on a small lake.  We would sleep in simple cabins surrounded by pine trees.

At night, my friends and I would go out to the edge of the dock, lay on our backs and stare at the stars together.  The air was warm, but there was always a cool breeze coming off the water.  We could smell the lake and the layers of sunscreen we had lathered on that day. We would listen to the frogs hidden in the reeds near the shore.  These moments, laying still and looking up, became significant memories for me.

Maybe because they allowed my mind to stretch and grow in new ways.

While I lay there, I would try to imagine how far out it all went.

I would think about how the circumference of the sun is more than one hundred times larger than the earth.

How our solar system, these eight planets and our sun, are one of seventy-nine star systems in our “stellar neighborhood”.  The closest of which I learned is 4.35 light-years away.

I would try to wrap my mind around what a light year really is.

How in one second, light travels 186,000 miles.  That is 7.5 times around the globe in one second flat.  There are over 31 million seconds in a year, so that means that light would travel around the earth more than 232 million times in one year. 

I love that light is that fastest traveling thing.

To really make my head spin, I would let my mind run to the fact that our neighborhood is tucked into an arm of the milky way galaxy.  And our galaxy alone contains an estimated one hundred billion stars.

 A beautifully spiraled collection stretching one hundred light years across.  

To be honest, I can’t even fathom the length and breadth of our own galaxy.  It is just too big for me. 

But it goes on.

Just like we have a stellar neighborhood, we have a local group of galaxies we hang out with.  This group consists of around fifty galaxies within the expanse of ten million light years.

Our local group of galaxies is a part the Virgo super-cluster which house tens of thousands of galaxies within it and spans an incredible 110 million light years across. 

Not only that, but scientist think there are about ten million super-clusters out there.  What!?  I can’t even…

The numbers are so large and my ability to understand time and space is so limited.  But I love trying to stretch my mind in this way.

Far past today’s worry and tomorrows to do list.

I always left that dock with my anxieties feeling smaller and the expanse and my Creator feeling much bigger.   And I felt more at peace.

Everything on earth has boundaries.  My yard, the forest preserve nearby, the Great Lakes, the continents, the sea, even the atmosphere. 

But the universe is so large, that we don’t know how far it all goes.  We are limited by what we call the “observable universe”.

When I think about the expanse of the universe, it cultivates deep awe and mystery for me.  It moves me and stirs wonder.

 Maybe it will for you too.

Someday soon, step outside in the black of night.  Smell the earth and lay in the grass.  Look up and try to imagine how far it all goes.  

Lay there long enough, and quiet enough to let the view well up wonder within you.

And if you need an extra push to get you out there, you can always get a puppy.