My phone alarm was going off. I opened my eyes, struggled for a second to get my arm out of my warm sleeping bag, and reached up through the darkness for the pocket in the roof of the tent where my phone was tucked into. I slid it out, turned it off, and looked at the time. It was just after 1:00 AM, and a thought quickly flitted through my mind: the moon is gone.
After a loaded eight mile hike the day before, my body didn’t agree that it was time to get up, open the tent to the crisp mountain air, lace up my boots, and walk into the darkness of the valley, but my mind knew exactly what was going on. The moon was gone, and the stars were out to play. Once my boots were laced, I stood, and with much anticipation, looked up at the night sky. Where we had set our tent in the Aspen grove gave me a view of a canopy of black silver-dollar leaves fluttering against slivers of the night sky, and I could see a few hints of stars – but only hints. Not wanting my eyes to adjust to the brightness of my headlamp, I slowly stepped my way through the Aspens and the chilly night air toward the open meadow. I stumbled through the blackness, gingerly searching with each step, feeling my way through the branches and undergrowth. Once I was in the open, I looked up, and my gaze was met with an indescribable scene. What lay before me, I struggled to fit into the framework of how my mind perceives the world around me. What lay before me was a scene that somehow both comforted me and left me in awe, a scene that made me want to yell and scream and jump for joy at the sheer spectacularity of it all but at the same time made me want to lay down and fix a simple gaze upon it and contemplate the immensity of it all. I fumbled my way back through the trees, unzipped the tent, and, grinning from ear to ear, woke Laura up like it was Christmas morning and it was time to unwrap presents.
We grabbed the camera, and spent the wee hours of the morn together enjoying the glorious scene that lay before us. After experiencing such a humbling, beautiful night, I must say, I am thankful to know the God that is bigger than us, the one who created the mountains, the stars, the planets, the universe, and us. The one who loves us dearly and deeply, even loves me enough to care about my life in light of how big the rest of the universe is. That’s pretty cool, if you ask me. Pretty damn cool.
The photo is our attempt at capturing the scene that night, and while I love it, as my friend Todd would always say, a photo doesn’t do reality justice. In this case, I must say, I do agree.
Also, the crazy looking ‘exploding planet’ is Jupiter, and while that’s not what it looked like when we were looking at it that night, for some strange reason that’s exactly how it came out of the camera – no photoshop or anything like that. I figured out why, and if you can guess why, you either get a Starbucks gift card or the right to ask me to do anything at all for up to 7 seconds (but you can’t tell me to punch myself or anything like that). Good luck!!
