In the age of the internet, adventure begins from the comfort of your living room. It was there, at sometime around 2:00 Thursday morning, that my attention was lassoed by an interesting headline: “LEONID METEOR SHOWER TONIGHT.” Normally, such an event would have been dismissed, especially given the time of night and temperature outside (brrrrrrrr), but something triggered that night which sprung me into action.
By the time I finished reading the article, and many subsequent articles, and checked my Facebook page a few dozen more times, the clock read close to 3 AM. Luckily for me, this was the precise time that all of the science nerds informed me I should look for the meteors. Now, before I continue the story, I’d like to point out a few key details. First, it was very late at night, and I was tired. Second, the temperature outside was so low, I could remember how to speak it in Spanish (Estamos a cinco grados). Finally, I know as much about astronomy as I know about proper eyeliner application.
I stepped outside, clad in a t-shirt, shorts, and without footwear, my eyes immediately posed towards the heavens. Star-gazing tip #1: know where to look. Turns out, the sky is big. Star-gazing tip #2: without your glasses, all lights appear to be meteors. Upon retrieval of my glasses, I continued the quest. I stood outside for the better part of ten minutes, alone in a quiet parking lot, with nothing to do but think. I thought about what I must look like to anyone who happened to see me at the time, no doubt assumed to be wrought with delirium. I thought about how dumb it was to think that I could see the stars with all of the parking lot lights blinding my eyes. I thought about all of the other articles I could have read an hour ago, ones that would have me in bed right now. But mostly, I just thought about how cold it was, so I headed back inside.
I needed a new gameplan. Among the many articles that I read earlier, many of them mentioned that, duh, it’s easier to see stars when it is dark outside. As it was now 3:30, I couldn’t possibly abort my quest, so I decided to head somewhere it was dark. I hopped in the car, this time with a coat on (genius) and drove until I found an open field without much light. I found it. In a cemetery. I guess you could say it wasn’t the best place for a person to be standing, alone, in the middle of the night, wearing only a ski jacket, pajama pants, and flip-flops, but I had abandoned logic much earlier that night, so I stepped out of the car.
Have you ever really looked at the stars? I mean, really looked at them? Never before in my life had I felt so small, and this is coming from a guy who played basketball in high school against some really, really tall dudes. When you live in the city, you generally assume that there’s like six or seven stars, maybe a few more if the strip joint a few blocks over forgot to turn off its spotlight. Turns out, there’s a whole mess of stars up there, and if you plan it right, you can really see something special. Alone, in that cemetery, with what can only be described as frost-bitten toes, I think I caught a small glimpse of the heavens.
Alas, I didn’t see any meteors that night. Perhaps if I had a perfect setting, or an ounce of astrological knowledge, or the proper equipment (star-gazing tip #3: flashlights don’t help you see meteors), my night may have ended differently. But don’t think for a second that I could chalk it up as a loss. Somewhere, in some land, at some time, God spoke and the heavens were separated from the land. It took an ounce of adventure, and a hint of delirium, but I got to see just what it may have looked like that very first night.
Genesis 1:14-15 – “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.’ And it was so.”
