A Starlit Reverie

Mosscape – Chloe Fox

Sofia Herbert

The human eye can see up to about 9,096 stars across the entire sky, but since we can only see half of the celestial sphere at any given moment, we really only see about 4,548 stars in ideal conditions. So despite our considerably large celestial scope, we can only feasibly see some negligible -illionth of the universe’s 200 billion trillion stars at a time. And in all honesty, it’s probably best that they’re so far away; on average, each star is about 4.4 nonillion pounds (100 solar masses) and emits 386 septillion joules of gamma radiation per second. It’s difficult to comprehend, but the point is they could kill you instantaneously.

And what is a star really, if not a giant plasma ball with the (statistically improbable) capacity to completely obliterate humankind? Yet, I have not met a single person who hates looking up at the stars at night. I have not met a single person who fears the twinkling lights that adorn the lifeless, silent night sky; moreover, I have not met a person who does not unconditionally love stars.

Maybe this is because a star has never literally hit Earth, and likely never will since Proxima Centauri, Earth’s closest star, resides 4.24 light-years (or 24.9 trillion miles) away. If there was a statistical chance a star could demolish Earth at any second, I imagine we’d like stars a lot less.

Thankfully, we can appreciate their dangerous potential and fantastical beauty from afar, but it’s a star’s overwhelming being—its utter duality—that truly makes it beautiful. And the same goes for all of nature. The great horned owl, for instance, is not only bewitching because of its majesty; its captivating quality derives from an otherwise beautiful bird’s capacity to be mercilessly gruesome. We love duality because it is between awe-inspiring and awful that we remember our own precious, infinitesimal mortality. I’m sure mice don’t feel the same way about owls, but as apex predators, humans have the luxury to romanticize dangerous things.

Sometimes, though, these dangerous things aren’t 24 trillion miles away in space or nestled in their nests in treetops—sometimes these dangerous things are curly-haired boys with an irresistible sense of humor and an unhealthy fascination with history.

A year ago, I went camping with a few friends, and on the last night of our trip, I met a boy. Well, I knew of him already, but I didn’t truly know him. And that’s how every good story that fails the Bechdel test starts.

As the sun began its descent into the treetops, we trekked to our campsite. Flashes of amber and gold filtered through the leaves and onto the muddy path as we fell into step with one another. He brought up a college we were both applying to. It was a safe topic for a first conversation, but once we started talking we couldn’t seem to stop. He had a strange, awkward voice as he spoke and the cadence of his words betrayed his near-perfect English, but I adored it. I couldn’t tell you why. I still can’t. As soon as he started speaking, I knew I’d do anything to hear him keep talking. 

He brought up how he loved Spanish—after all, he spent the better half of his life in Mexico—so I asked him what his favorite word was. He listed off a few words, and his accent made me smile. Finally, he paused for a few seconds and told me it was “vergüenza” because he just liked the way the word looked. Or maybe because he liked how it sounded. I don’t remember—I wish I did. 

As we walked, he told me stories about his life in Mexico. He talked about his younger sister—their princesita—and his older brother, but I barely heard a word. I liked the way he talked—I liked the way I could feel how much he loved them. At one point, he shifted to talking about history. He spoke so vivaciously, that he stumbled over his words and his eyes glittered with fascination, which I know isn’t quite how you’re supposed to describe teenage boys, but all I could think was that I adored the uninhibited passion that consumed his words. He eventually quieted and, somewhat ashamed, confessed he was a complete history buff by way of an unnecessary (and gravely belated) apology. I rolled my eyes and dismissively asked him to keep going, which set him off for another five minutes about the Cold War and how mad he was it hadn’t been on the U.S. History exam. As he talked about Truman’s foreign policy, I found myself wholly enraptured by this curly-haired closet nerd. 

I don’t remember the walk itself or the scenery around us. We’d been walking for an hour by the time we reached the campsite, and he made it feel like no time at all. ¹

We set our sleeping bags across from each other in an unspoken agreement. Not side-by-side because we weren’t that close, but not three feet apart like we were strangers—a comfortable one foot apart because we were familiar. We talked as the surrounding chatter died down and the fire’s crackles subsided until we were the only ones awake. Nestled in our sleeping bags, we talked as the orange sky smoldered to midnight black like an ember, and we talked as the sky deepened a twinkling sapphire. We talked until darkness masked our features and our hushed voices were the only things between us. 

We talked about our favorite TV shows and our dogs and our classes for next year. But sometime in the morning, something between us shifted. We lay on our stomachs and looked out at what little of the forest was illuminated by the moonlight. He talked about his grandparents and his mother, and he listened as I talked about my own family. He told me the story of how his parents met and how his family moved to Long Island when he was eleven. Later, I felt the anxiety laced in his voice when he confessed he was scared he didn’t know what to do—who to be. He told me he didn’t see himself as a doctor and he obviously couldn’t be a historian because he needed to make money. I wanted to tell him that regardless of what he became, I was confident who he became would be amazing. And I believed that with all my heart, but I stayed quiet. Revealing that I thought the world of him after knowing him for four hours seemed too sudden. 

Around four in the morning, when the stars glowed their brightest, he turned over in his sleeping bag across from me and gazed at the sparkling sky in awe. Distracted, he asked if my camera could take a picture of the stars—if my fifteen-dollar (expired) disposable camera from Walgreens could truly capture the array of blinking lights above us.

I shook my head, but I took the picture anyway. I took the picture because I needed to know what it was in the stars that made him smile like that, but what I really wanted to capture on my expired Fujifilm camera was him. Which I knew was impossible and futile, because the photo would be underexposed and disappointing compared to what I saw. He was my star, and I looked at him the same way he looked at the shimmering constellations strewn across the night sky—as if there was something mesmerizingly beautiful and quietly horrifying about the matter before us. 

The picture was underwhelmingly black when I reviewed the film a week later. Apparently, my year-old Fujifilm didn’t find the stars as dazzling as we did. 

Like billions before me who have found fear and beauty in a celestial sky, in an altar before God, or in the words of a song, I too have found yet another mysterium tremendum et fascinans—a mystery before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated, is both repelled and attracted.  

Falling for hauntingly beautiful things is idiosyncratic to the human experience. Falling for constellations, for sunsets, for art, for songs, for people—that is human nature. That night, the latent danger and twinkling beauty of the stars above paled in comparison to the boy who lay two feet across from me. And this was terrifying because I love the sky. 

1.  And that’s the power of teenage boys: reducing writers to cliches. 
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