Clusters of Moments: September 2020

Nature marvels. It leaves us in awe. At times, all we can do is resign in its vastness and accept humility. Accept that we are insignificant in the limitlessness of its being. That we are powerless in the energy it exerts. That we are ignorant in light of the mysteries it holds.

Standing under the stars in a desert reminds me of exactly that. Staring at a sky filled so choc-a-bloc with stars, I wonder if they have room to move.

An RV trip takes us to the middle of the Alvord desert in the Southeast of Oregon. I had often looked at that corner of Oregon with curiosity and Covid seems like the perfect time to explore remote, uninhabited parts of Oregon in a rented RV. Gears move swiftly in motion once I discover that it is possible to camp smack in the middle of the dessert as it is BLM (Bureau of Land Management)-managed land.

Our RV stands in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere, without another soul for miles. We stand on the parched alkaline desert ground, with the Steens mountains on one side, and infinity on the other. A river once flowed here, and what now remains, is a large playa basin encrusted with salt mineral fissures. Silence engulfs us as we stand on the crumpled looking dry lake bed, and the world seems to slow down, just a little bit.

After dinner, we plant our chairs under the silence and the sparkle of the desert sky. The moon however, is rather bright as it is only a few days short of a full moon. We see the Milky Way, we see several planets and constellations that we normally cannot. We watch the International space station make it round. We don’t need a flashlight as the stars and especially the moon is so bright and the parched yellowish cracked ground reflects it all.

I wonder how the desert sky would be on a new moon night.

I wake up around 4 a.m. to use the bathroom and happen to glance outside the window to remind myself of my surreal surroundings and current location. My jaw drops. The sky is a cluster of twinkling Christmas lights, crammed with stars. I step outside. The moon is gone and the stars are all out to play – every single one of them. Yes. The moon has gone to bed and the stars are dancing. They dance with a natural mirth and an ease of being and a knowingness of their place and power – they know who they are and what they can be – and all I can feel is awe, and perhaps a twinge of envy.

My husband and daughter are sound asleep. I decide to wake them out of their deep slumber. We step out of the RV. It is 4 am. We do not need a flashlight. The stars shine bright and the earth holds the light. We stand there mesmerized by it all.

My daughter quips, “this is like a planetarium”. It certainly is. The Milky Way stretches out and sparkles with authority. My husband uses an App on his phone to identify constellations, and planets and galaxies. Yes, entire galaxies – visible to the naked eye. We marvel at the Andromeda galaxy and the Triangulum galaxy right in front of us.

I wonder what lies in these nebulous zones twinkling before my eyes. If that is an entire galaxy I am staring at, just how insignificant is the earth, and just how insignificant am I? I am not even a dot on my planet, and my planet is not even a dot in this immenseness before my eyes.

I want to learn astronomy, I want to know more about these stars and planets and the others that inhabit them. Surely, it can’t just be the 7.5 billion of us in this limitlessness glowing before me.

Yes. The sky is majestic. Nature is majestic. I am humbled by its grandness, its beauty, its power, its continuity, its never-ending, its never-stopping, its sheer force.

And even when I stand mesmerized in its awe, even when I feel humbled and tiny, I know that I am a part of it. That I am a part of this grandness, in my own, teeny, tiny, absolutely insignificant way. And we all are. And that we get to be a part of something so magnificent and beautiful is a beautiful thing.