The Night Sky

by Jonathan Shipley

Look in the night sky and you can see forever.

You can see our past, the future, the here, the infinite. You can see the stuff that we are made of: stardust. You can see the planets we have named and, perhaps, have dreams of visiting.

As I write this, the planets are aligning. In a rare occurrence, six planets will soon align in a rare planetary parade, all visible with the naked eye: Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, and Mercury.

Have you walked the marsh at night under moon glow? Looked up and marveled at the Big Dipper? There is a Ho-Chunk story of seven sacred maidens. They were assigned to collect medicinal plants but were chased by an evil snake spirit. The Earthmaker lifted them into the sky, where they became the Big Dipper.

Have you walked in the dark grass and watched Orion in his eternal hunt? I do not believe in God, but I do look to Orion as some kind of deity, a constant companion. I talk to him a lot during my late-night sojourns. I see him and say, “Hello, old friend.”

Indigo buntings migrate over Wisconsin in night skies. They orient themselves using star patterns around the North Star. So do white-throated sparrows, and yellowthroats, and Swainson’s thrushes.

Often, walking the marsh paths, it’s silent—the only sound is my breath, my footfalls. But, sometimes, I can hear Canada geese in their Vs across the dark. Other times, I can hear a Great Horned Owl in the limb of an oak.

During the Middle Ages, owls became associated with witches. The owl’s night calls were feared as a sign of dark magic or death. Sometimes I feel most alive in the dark magic of night. For me, the owls are a comfort.

Look in the night sky and you can see forever—our past, our future. In centuries past, people looked up at the stars at this marsh, and in Munich, and in Mombasa, and in Machu Picchu, awed by the same moon, the same light of the Big Dipper, the same velvet blackness that cradles all.

Have you ever walked the marsh at night under that silent clattering of stars? Those same stars your grandparents wished upon? And that their grandparents wished upon? And their grandparents wished upon? And their grandparents? Wishes upon wishes to the earliest of times. Wish granted, we step down from the trees, marveling at the ground our feet found purchase on, but, also, all the while, looking up at where we came from, where we knew we would go back to.

We are oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus. We are almost entirely stardust. I do not believe in God, but ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Have you ever walked the marsh at night under the orbits of distant planets? The ones that forever circle us, and the deer, the raccoons, the fish in the Yahara, the frogs, the wood pee-wees?

The planets will align for a short while these next days before spinning off in their quiet singular trajectories. The stars will continue to blaze. The moon will continue its chariot ride across the expanse. And, in that time, there will be more wishes sent to those distant lights, and more wishes will be granted, like the one I had: to have a night walk in the woods with all the ancestors, with all the living things in all the times, all still aglow with an inextinguishable fire.