The stars look the way they should. The way they have for thousands of years.
It’s sometime between 1:30 and 3 AM. I’m awake. We made a cowboy camp with nothing overhead to impede the view of the naked sky. The moon hasn’t risen yet. The Milky Way is clearly visible dancing around the brighter stars in its circular, twisty formation. Thanks to KB, I know that the 3 in a row are Orion’s Belt. I can see the Seven Sisters and of course, the Big Dipper is almost too obvious to mention. She’s about a foot away, tucked in her down cocoon on the same ground cloth as me.
I’m almost always awake at this time. Whether I’m at home with a roof over my head that blocks out most of the artificial light flooding it or in the middle of nowhere with my face wrapped tight with my down bag and my breath billowing out of my small blow hole, I wake up.
And the fact that I am awake is one of the reasons I have always loved sleeping under the stars. I know a lot of people struggle with sleeping without protection from bugs and that bothers them, but for me, the ability to see the stars directly overhead when my eyes pop open at 2 in the morning is reason enough to keep the tent at home.
I love looking at the stars.
I always struggled as a child when we did those “What do you want to be?” workshops. I never knew. Or more accurately, there wasn’t anything I wanted to be other than just me.
My typical response was an engineer if I was feeling responsible and something more like
While I never knew what box I wanted to fit myself into as I was forced to go through the process of becoming a responsible, upstanding member of society, I did know there were certain ones that everyone put down that I never understood. Doctor? Nah. Movie star? I mean having tons of money would be
And I never wanted to be an astronaut.
There were bike bags scattered through the back of the house into the backyard. All of these bags were in one way or another being packed or attached to a bike. It was a little after 3 PM on Friday. Mama Bear and I were both frantically trying to pack quickly to ensure we had enough daylight, but also slowly enough to not forget anything.
Sometime after 4, we decided that everything was packed (it was not, I forgot my beanie) and started to pedal from the Lounge headed south. My week had been rough, not that my job or daily life was particularly stressful, more just the demons I am always struggling to keep at bay were particularly active, but the farther we pedaled, the clearer my head got.
We dropped down to the bike path we had ridden hundreds of times making our way east toward the Fields. The frontage road at 4799 East finally came into view and we were then on dirt. The Meinkeys were camped somewhere out there and our end goal was to meet up.
We followed what seemed like endless dirt roads. Turning when it was appropriate on to new dirt roads. The occasional car passed or came out of where we were headed, but as the gloaming began and we were starting to get out there, we were alone. It was quiet. There was a slight chill in the air that was perfect for pedaling.
It was getting dark when we made a right hand turn and went up, straight up. We only had 3/4 of a mile to go, but it took us another 30 minutes due to the grade of the road having to push on occasion due to the inability to maintain traction. I could hear them from the switchback below and then I could see them standing in the road, headlamp on, waiting for us.
We rolled up in total darkness having read the road with the little bit of light pollution coming from the city to the north and the stars over head. We quickly bundled up, got food going and laid out our beds under the dark
The sun finally rose. We had all been anxiously awaiting its arrival. The night hadn’t been overly cold, but a bighting breeze kept us aware of the temperature all night long. The glow began on the horizon and then beamed across lighting up Pine Valley, the Red Mountain and eventually the valley where St. George has been erected.
Camped on top of Joe Blake Hill, this morning was a new view for me. After residing most of my life in St. George, I was experiencing
We ate breakfast in our bags due to that biting wind. I reveled in the fact that most of my 38 years on this earth have been spent in SG and here I sat camped on the edge of a hill seeing a view I had never witnessed. It was new. It was
And then we reversed the whole thing and were back to the Lounge for lunch.
I’ve always been curious about what was around the next bend. When kids were dreaming of going to the stars, I was reading Ghosts of Everest and Into Thin Air. As a teenager, I even had a subscription to Backpacker which may explain a lot of different things.
It was never a lack of curiosity or adventure that kept me from wanting to be an astronaut. I think I was just a little too focused on everything that exists here that I still haven’t seen, like a sunrise from Joe Blake Hill on a Saturday morning, that kept me from even considering the stars.
I still don’t want to be an astronaut. I mean given the opportunity, yah, I would clearly go because duh. But when I lie awake at 2:14 AM, my head frozen because a biting wind is rolling over it and I forgot my beanie, I see the stars and feel grounded.
And then I realize, this is what I want to be when I grow up.
P. L. and R.
