The night was wild with wind.
Gusts came like cannon shots, intermittent explosions against the side of the tent. In between blasts the sound returned to the dull roar of a waterfall or a passing train. Each gust nearly flattened the tent, pressing cold nylon onto our faces in the pitch-dark. We sat up, leaning against the windward side to brace the poles that kept bending in too far, at too sharp an angle. Eventually, a stake broke loose and the fly flapped madly against the wall. I crawled out into the night to lash it all back down and check the other stakes. Bent over, nearly crawling in the roaring wind, I moved around the tent, tightening ropes and pushing rocks onto the stakes.
As I finished, I looked up at the sky—just a glance. And my heart stopped cold in my chest; my stomach turned over on itself. I’m not sure I’ve ever had such an acute visceral reaction to the dome of sky above. I did not recognize a single star, not a single constellation, as though the “fixed stars” had broken loose and the roaring gale had flung them around the heavens, randomizing the patterns I knew as constellations. Under that sky I had no bearings, no sense of direction, time, or season. I was lost, disoriented, at the mercy of a wind whose direction I couldn’t name.
We were in Patagonia, on a barren plain beneath the Torres del Paine. Those few southern stars that I knew, but had never seen, were obscured by the mountains or had not yet risen. I’d been in tents straining against a gale before; I’d been far from home. But I’d never experienced the alienation, the complete otherworldliness, of a sky I did not recognize. We’d traveled for days—south through Santiago to Punta Arenas, across the plains by bus, straining for cognates in Spanish. We’d hiked in sight of these odd towers and the even stranger peaks of Los Cuernos, past plants we didn’t know, watching birds that never visit the Northern Hemisphere. Through all that, I knew I was “away,” but that was the familiar unfamiliarity of travel. We’d known those feelings before. But until that moment, I never understood how important the stars are to my sense of place.
My heart beat normally again as I crawled back into the warmth and security of the tent. And as I leaned against the windward wall, I was transported back to my childhood, to my “astronomy phase,” and an idea I hadn’t considered for 30 years: that our earthly constellations are not, in fact, arranged on a plane, but rather in three nearly infinite dimensions. For the traveler deep in space, Orion would not exist; its stars would no longer be arrayed in the familiar pattern.
When, all these decades later, I visualized what I’d struggled to imagine as a 10-year-old, I wasn’t prepared for the impact. What had been an interesting intellectual exercise as a child was transformed as I finally felt its full emotional impact. I was in a tiny tent in an alien world. Which star up there is Rigel? What color is the sun on this planet?
Until that night in Patagonia, I’d never realized that I literally never go outside at night without a glance at the sky. Numerous entries in my journals confirm this reflexive ritual—references to the stars outnumber accounts of the weather:
Mt. Whitney—The creeping, living cold drives me deep into by bag. Blazing above is the spectacle of the summer stars—Hercules, Draco, Cygnus—embedded in the glow of the Milky Way. In the east there is no hint yet of dawn and the warmth and light that will let me work my way down from this summit. I try to will the earth to turn faster and I rejoice with each new star that breaks the horizon, marking another degree closer to the sun and the end of this night.
Indiana—Opening morning. I settle into my tree stand long before first light. Ritual and habit direct each step—each always the same, always in order: gloves, my thermos, my facemask, the arrow nocked, my pack hung quietly out of the way. I pour my first cup of coffee. One last step—I find Orion, high in the early morning October sky, filtering through the branches. Ready.
Bishop, CA—We roll our sleeping bags out in the sage. Bone weary from the eight-hour drive from Berkeley, we desperately want sleep—tomorrow will be hard. The stars blaze overhead with a luminosity that casts shadows. Halfway down the western sky, they end abruptly in the jagged silhouette of the Sierra crest. Among those angles of darkness is the peak we came to climb—distant, forbidding, a facade of pure black. We stare at the jagged edge of the stars until sleep finally comes.
Ecuador—A night float on the Tiputini River, deep in the Amazon basin. The boat drifts gently with the current. The silence is broken only by the bellow of howler monkeys deep in the forest and the staccato clicking of bats dipping invisibly over the river. Stars beyond counting mark the
forest gap over the river. We have the sensation of motion but no clue to direction except the shift of the Southern Cross from bow to stern as we snake around 180-degree hairpins in the river.
Crystal Lake, IL—My dog Tule is perched as always in the bow of the duck boat. The night is dead calm. Not a ripple mars the surface of the lake. Stars reflect, perfectly focused, in the still water. Sky and water merge into a single blackness and the boat floats, not on water but among the stars now above and below. A hundred mallard wings rip the silence and I remember why we’re here. The motor coughs, catches, and pushes the boat up the lake. The starry reflections ripple away, blurred and distorted by the bow wake.
Astronomy was among my first childhood passions. I was sure I wanted to be an astronomer, for that was the only way to gain access to bigger and bigger telescopes, which after all is the lust that has consumed every astronomer since Galileo. I remember, as vividly as if it were yesterday, the first view of the Pleiades through a telescope that arrived at Christmas, when the Seven Sisters became 700.
My romantic notions of astronomy were dashed by the discovery that modern astronomers spend more time analyzing spectra than staring through an eyepiece. But this was a first and beautiful passion. And I threw myself wholly into my “work.” I spent hours copying star charts. I have no idea what purpose I imagined this would serve, but I did it obsessively.
The result, all these years later, is a knowledge of the night sky that has stayed with me long after other information has been buried deep or lost. I’m sure that was the origin of my habitual glance skyward. And I’m sure now, after the anxiety provided by that alien Patagonia sky, why that ritual became ingrained.
The stars fix my position in time and space. They affirm my position on Earth more surely than any map or compass or, god forbid, GPS. They mark the seasons even when the earthly signals are false. When Leo rises in the early evening sky, it confirms the passing of winter even if the night is bitter cold and an April snow crunches underfoot. There is much to be said for constancy and predictability. In a world too uncertain in too many ways, the stars are the closest thing to Truth that I know. And so they become part of each excursion, markers I can trust.
And so, always, that subconscious, reflexive glance at the sky.
A week later and miles from the wind-blasted camp, we were perched on a high ledge beneath Mt. Fitzroy. Late at night as I checked the tent stakes one last time, I glanced at the sky. Far to the north, in a gap among the peaks, shone a ruby-red star. A curving string of stars led south from it, confirming it as Antares, the alpha star in Scorpio, an old friend. I crawled back into the tent, excited about the newness of the world we were exploring, but at peace. We were far from home on a great adventure. But in that moment my position on earth was fixed. And more important, I knew the direction of home.
David Krohne is Professor Emeritus of Biology at Wabash and lives outside of Spokane, WA. You can reach him at krohnedave@gmail.com
