When was the last time you sat outside after the sun went down and just watched the sky? It’s finally, finally, cool enough to do so again, and I’ve been making the most of it. If you just sit and look, you notice odd things, such as that satellite making its wobbly way across the sky, the one that suddenly disappears into the atmosphere even though you can see tiny pinpoints of stars in that same area. Stars that are infinitely beyond that satellite.

Once I watched what looked to be a plane heading east suddenly do a reverse west, scoop up the diapers, and head east again. With zero pause or looping involved. Another time what also looked to be a plane coming over the mountains split into a fan of 5 lights that flew for another 10 seconds before disappearing. All of them. And it wasn’t like there were 5 planes coming over the mountain, that would have been obvious; no, it was one light that split into 5.

Or did 4 pods drop from the Mother Ship and they all headed off on their own missions? I’ll never know…

Where we lived when I was a teenager, you could step out the back door and there was the Milky Way, stretched all the way across the sky. Here, a mile above sea level, where you would think it would be as if you could reach up and touch the Milky Way – it’s nowhere to be seen. I wonder why that is? Is it only visible in certain parts of the world, like the Aurora Borealis? Are there too many lights here? Nah, it can’t be that because the sky if full of stars on dark moon nights. I can’t remember the last time I saw the Milky Way, and I miss it.

©Pip Miller – August 2021

PS: 5 points if you get the diaper reference. 😂