Stars

Summer will be officially over in 7 days (!!!). It's sad but inevitable and the past summer (the part after Camp PEAK - that was clearly and wonderfully real) felt a bit like a dream anyway, it passed so quickly. It's so short compared to the school year of 10 MONTHS . . . but it was sufficiently relaxing.

Maybe the dreamlike quality of the summer was due to my extensive reading? I notice that reading makes time fly by and feel flimsy - and I did read a lot this summer. Maybe I'll do some book reviews later.

Last weekend my family and I went camping to Killbear, a good camping place that's only about 2-3 hours worth of driving away if you live in Mississauga. One of the best things about it is how little mosquitoes there are compared to some other places you might go to, like Sandbanks, and there aren't any marshes (which are generally good mosquito habitats).

There were good hiking trails, blissfully cool water and bright sunshine . . . just to make us miss summer all that more. Like giving someone a delicious slice of cake full of custard and icing, and taking it away when they've only half-finished it. Yanked from our grasp.

One thing, though, stood out for me for this camping trip. It was the sight of the stars.

It was like diamond dust had been sprinkled across the sky - the stars were shining like jewels, of varying size, some even flashing colour. The sky itself was deep, velvety indigo - almost black, but not quite. You could tell where the black shapes of the tree leaves above you ended, and the sky began.

My mother tested my eyesight - she told me how one of the stars in the Big Dipper constellation had a twin star, and that in ancient times, eyesight was tested this way too. I found it - the centre star of the handle. The twin was the size of a pinprick.

You never see this many stars in the suburbs - let alone the city! The horizon is always full of this ugly orange glow from the street lamps, and too often the sky is clouded, probably for unnatural reasons.

There was a light smudge stretching from one part of the sky to the other - like a cloud, but it was behind the stars. The Milky Way. Full of stars, some bright and standing out - the others fading into the smudge. It looks like a smudge, I suppose, because of the glow of the stars in it that are too far away to be seen as individual light sources from here. Amazing - this is the first time I've seen the Milky Way like this.

Magnificent. Magical.