By Maggie Beamguard
Insider Editor
One of the most striking things about Seven Lakes is the stars that pop like diamonds on the dark cloak of night. We moved here from a neighborhood with ample street lighting that cut on at sunset and washed out the stars.
But from our home we have spied the international space station chart its course above us and where astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are currently stranded aboard. We’ve also seen Starlink satellite launches and, recently, the northern lights. With our amateur telescope, we witnessed The “Great Conjunction” of Saturn and Jupiter and the comet NEOWISE in 2020.
Here the Seven Sisters are clear.
I’ll never forget the occasion when I first realized that we need the dark to see the light. I was 16 and on a family camping trip in the Southwest. One night we found ourselves in the wilderness of Utah. The closest small town was at least 30 miles away.
In the middle of the night, my brother-in-law woke us with a scream. “Oh my God! Come quick!”
Startled and thinking he may have stepped on a rattler nest while groping his way to the outhouse, we bounded out of our tents, sleeping bags tangling around our feet.
He did not require anti-venom. Rather, he stood stunned and gap-mouthed and staring at the clear night sky adorned by the glory of a hundred million stars and our galaxy’s swirling, milky clouds. The usual, flat pitch of the universe stretching above us became dizzyingly three-dimensional.
I made a dozen youthful wishes that night upon the chunks of rock and ice set ablaze by earth’s atmosphere. I’ve not seen a show like it since.
It’s rare to see a shooting star. Conditions have to be just right: not overcast or too humid, a new moon, the right time of year.
Though less spectacular than Utah, the star-gazing advantage we have in Seven Lakes is that we simply have to step into our yards. With a little luck, we may just catch a glimpse of something otherworldly.
As I write this column in August, I’m hoping conditions might be right to see the Perseids meteor shower this year.
I’m working on my wishlist just in case. I don’t want to get caught flat footed like my niece, Camille.
She texted her mother, my sister Caroline, about a shooting star sighting over her Oregon skies, an exchange I share with their permission.
Camille: I saw a shooting star last night.
Caroline: Did you make a wish?
Camille: I think so?
Caroline: . . .
Camille: I panicked and took too long so I don’t know if time is a factor in wish granting decisions.
While I’d like to think wishes come with a little grace period, we can’t really know. Some things remain a mystery. Like, how vast is the sky? And how numerous are the stars? And how do wishes work?
All we can do is be ready with wonder and a wish. Or two.
Contact Maggie Beamguard at maggie@thepilot.com.
