Nebraska Sky

Another musing from the 2010 railroad trip to California from Ohio.....sadly, I still haven't gone seeking the stars!

I sleep eight hours; that is what my body does. I go to sleep and eight hours later, I wake up. Last night when I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, I woke up at what my body perceived to be 6:00 a.m. The only problem was the fact that the train had traveled through the night and we were located in Mountain Standard Time; the clock said it was 4:00 a.m.! There is no life on an Amtrak train at 4:00 in the morning, but I was awake, and there was no point in trying to go back to sleep. With nothing else to do, I looked out the window into a black Nebraska sky filled with a million stars. There were no city lights to dim their brilliance, and it was possible, as I looked from darkness into darkness, to discern surface features by starlight alone.
The cities have stolen the stars. We live surrounded by light and the harsh city lights consume the stars. I had forgotten how the sky fills with points of light and the lush band of the Milky Way bisects that same sky. I think I remember my dad taking us outside to see the aurora borealis once. It was a rarity to see the northern lights as far south as Colorado and I wasn't very big. In fact, I am not even sure if I actually saw them, or only wish that I had! Would the city lights steal those too?
When I am not on the train, I live in a place where I could go and find the stars; I need to do that. When I glimpse the heavens, I can reach up and touch the face of God; why would I want to deprive myself of that?