Wind and Sky and Summer Nights

Starry-Night

One night when the wind was howling we drove out to the west end of the Ranch to have dinner with old friends, wending our way along dirt roads past ancient oaks and fragrant brush, climbing upwards to magnificent viewpoints.

Oh, that wind, billowing my skirt, upending my hair, rippling the grasses, dancing the branches of trees.

Even if its incessant blowing makes me irritable over time, I love the way it renders everything noisy and alive. The entire earth was animated.

Then afterwards there was that black expanse of heaven, strewn with stars. The darkness here is deep and pure, and the Milky Way galaxy spills visibly across the heavens, and there's the Summer Triangle: Vega,  Altair, and Deneb, three brilliant stars linking the constellations of Lyra the Harp, Aquila the Eagle, and Cygnus the Swan.

I honestly can't discern any of those shapes, but I love the fact that the ancients gazed upward in wonder as we do now, imagining gods and creatures, weaving myths, dazzled by the infinite.

My friend who is a poet mentioned the summer sky in an email and shared some verses from Rilke's Spanish Trilogy. One, referring to a shepherd, says,  "Late at night he wakes up, the call of distant birds already inside him, and feels powerful because he has taken all the galaxies into his face, oh not lightly..."

I gaze upward like the shepherd. I'm a pilgrim looking up. And I feel somehow both insignificant and privileged, grateful to be among those bearing witness in this fleeting moment granted me.

And the wind continued its howling as we drove back down the mountain, and the trees waved good-bye.

On these starry nights I fall in love with here all over again. Galaxies beam onto our faces, stars pound on the roofs, and I do believe some of the light pours into us and we carry it through our lifetimes and beyond.