Imagining the stars

The wind from the west throws snow at my back. The rattle of my boots on hardened trail breaks the silence. I can hear the rhythm of my heartbeat as I stop by the bridge.

There is something big hidden beneath the skin of a night walk in winter. A halo hangs about the moon transcending the veil of snow that tips from the heavens. I turn to see my tracks where I have been and then turn back to where the trail leads. The old rail line, now a corridor with a pale floor added, heads off into varying shades of forest. I guess if the image of the trail were a metaphor for a journey then perhaps it is why we look up, up to the night sky to seek direction for that we do not know and cannot name.

Perhaps again it is why the fascination for the night sky is embedded within our psyche, our curiosity. Nights are about adventure, navigators, poets, lovers, the mysterious…the unknown. The infinite starscape is probably the most interpreted dimension to capture the human imagination. Here in the northern hemisphere, where we simultaneously confront the beauty and stark rawness of the season, the moons of wintertime take on a quality of their own. But while we get to behold the winter skies minus the bother of mosquitoes and black flies, you don’t want to forget you mitts and toque.

I have come to visit the new moon of January. To the Algonquin people this moon was the Wolf Moon, the Old Moon also known as the Moon after Yule. Yule time was observed around the world by Native American tribes, the Norsemen, ancient Romans, and is celebrated today by modern Pagans, Witches and Wiccans. Interesting that Yule was a Pagan holy day of the Winter Solstice that predates Christianity, and the word maintains within the reference of the season.

night past when, after reading a bedtime story to my son, we laid back and counted stars one by one as they circled above. The starscape in some ways was not unlike the one suspended above the rooftops of the village tonight, but like tonight, the falling snow held the stars from view. I guess you could say that this particular celestial sky was more of a stand-in, a fabricated kind of starry night designed to climb walls and ceilings of darkened rooms on command. The stars were the projected kind, the kind featured in a globe-shaped clock radio for children like the one my six-year-old Luc found under the tree on Christmas morning.

Besides the usual buttons and dials for alarm, set, radio, and the ever popular snooze button, there were additional controls: one that read Projector; another that said Spin. Kinda powerful feeling I must admit, to be able to turn on the night heavens with the flick of a switch and have the spectacle of the lit-up universe to view from the warmth of a feathered duvet. So depending on the mood one can sail the heavens or still them in an instant while awaiting the sandman. This invention incidentally is highly recommended for big and little folk. Age is not a factor.

There in the dark we watched as our faux night sky galloped, calliope-like about the ceiling in nonstop rotation. Like fireflies streaming through the night, planets flew above the black holes of outer space that, come daylight, re-fashioned back into the wood knots of the pine ceiling boards. We waited for the cycle to complete and anticipated the return of certain stars and planets. And then we ventured the possibilities of catching a star or two as they passed our way on the next revolution. What if, we wondered? Would the stars yank us out from under the bedcovers? Pull us high into space, maybe even higher than the Wellington water tower we wanted to know? And if we did catch one and if we were to taste it, what would that be like? Probably something like ‘candiedgingerseasaltcinamon’ or maybe an ‘eggnoglemongingerbread’ moon with the add on of shortbread planets? Perhaps? Just perhaps.

Snow continues to fall along the trail. The pale shadows of cattails edge the ink-stained creek that separates forest from night. Tall, once majestic trees, now towering deadwood, regain their majesty as marble pillars shrouded in the haze of moonlight. And so, before I leave here I am sure to catch at least one snowflake on my tongue to honour the childlike wonder over which the night sky presides: a place, an inner starscape where age is not a factor.