One of many
trip reports under the
SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie
Grow.
Email me at
ajs@frii.com.
Last update: May 21, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1996_0510-12_KT,GSDNM,Shavano.htm)
This is an "intermission" in my journal of travels and adventures...
First to set the stage: It is warm, perhaps 75 deg, and very dark; calm and moonless. You are many miles from any bright lights. You are wearing very little; the air is dry and comfortable. You are lying on a sleeping bag on the carpeted top deck of a houseboat, floating in a sea of stars reflected in gently rippling black water. Surrounding you are the featureless silhouettes of distant cliffs. It is a benign, peaceful, quiet place... Now, here's what I wrote in my journal:
Friday night, still in the San Juan River arm at Lake Powell. I will relate later the full events of the day. Right now I want to try to capture an amazing experience while it is fresh, in fact, still happening.
I'm lying on the top deck listening to sweet music as people fall asleep around me. Overhead is a canopy of stars in a black sky. I think just now I really saw the galaxy for the first time -- in a new way -- a paradigm shift that is spectacular in its scale.
I'm finding if I lay down and tip my head back and gaze at the galaxy, I fall into it. After practicing this a bit I can sustain the illusion -- no, the realization -- while looking up normally.
So much of the time nowadays we don't see a dark sky at all. Too many lights, or clouds, or we don't take the time to gaze. And even if we are out in a place and night like this, we don't perceive the canopy as more than a dome. If an aircraft passes through, it is in a far part of the flat sky.
But -- picturing in my mind's eye the true shape of the Milky Way, then looking at it -- suddenly I realize that I'm seeing it for real -- not a picture -- pow! I am floating in a vast space full of stars. The dust-cloud-shrouded arch of the galaxy is not a shape -- it is a depth -- right before me.
I am still aware of gravity, but "up" is no longer relative to the Earth, only to my eyes. I feel as though adrift between the stars, surrounded by stars, nearer and farther -- and suddenly I realize that is exactly what I'm actually seeing -- not an image, not a flat projection, but a huge, eternal cosmos -- stars circling a pinwheel -- it is in real time too -- right in front of me -- I am a part of it, although it is majestically slow. I am drifting in space, simply attached to the ball of rock adrift with me.
I see Jupiter and the ecliptic, a plane of rotation, askew from the larger whole. All in motion before me! I need no spacecraft to perceive the act of being in space -- only an awareness of what's actually before my eyes.
It is a powerful, novel perception I will seek to practice. It feels incredible! I have stepped off the homeworld -- all in my mind, but all really beyond my mind, before me. I simply had to see it.
Well -- perhaps I'm able to capture and revisit this awareness; perhaps not. I thought to put this description on looseleaf, and then realized, if it does not belong here (in my journal), then nothing does. -- A departure from the usual dry recounting of "what", but not "wow".
Some reflections later:
After 40 years of studying the night sky, becoming familiar with it, even bored by its relative changelessness, I unexpectedly saw it in a whole new way. That was astonishing. It's as if the universe went from infinitely distant and vast, but flat, to surrounding and present, vast yet tangible.
I was able to recreate the perception (not really an illusion) repeatedly for about two hours before finally going to sleep. I could switch back and forth between the "normal, flat" perception and the feeling of being adrift in the stars. To switch to the latter it helped to imagine that the brighter stars were closer, though this is only approximately true. Eventually I was so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open, and I gave it up.
The next night, after the crescent moon set, I noticed I could have the same perception again, but any lights around, even downstairs on the houseboat, made it really difficult. Moonlight also washed out the sky to where it lost its detail and depth. I needed to see the fine shades in the Milky Way to appreciate its true nature.
I also looked at the Andromeda galaxy and tried to see it, "as it really is." That was rather hard. First taking in all of the home galaxy, then accepting that a tiny, faint smudge was another vast array just like it? The distance and scale was beyond comprehension. I settled for what I could (barely) grasp.
While enjoying this view of the galaxy I did not feel exactly "connected" to it, but I did have a powerful sense of being, "a part of it, in the middle of it." Furthermore as I used binoculars to watch stars rise and set above the surrounding cliffs, I began to get a sense of motion. I figured out which way each movement went -- Earth, planets, stars.
I couldn't see Jupiter progress in its orbit, of course, nor the stars revolve around the galaxy, but I was strongly aware that it was happening right there before me, changing (though infinitely slowly) even as I studied it. The sensation was rather like the carnival ride (Mad Hatter) where you sit in a "teacup" that spins, mounted on a spinning disk with several other "cups", all mounted on a larger rotating wheel.
I also had the strong perception that the sky (space) that I saw above me continued right around the planet. Instead of feeling bound to the planet as a huge point of reference, it became a very small sphere in a vastly larger space. My frame of reference detached from the Earth. When an airplane flew by, it felt very close to me, also a part of the planet, not at all a part of the sky. At that moment, for the first time, I had no envy of the people who are able to experience freefall in Earth orbit surrounded by stars. I knew exactly how it feels.
Well I've read over this account several times now, and am disappointed that the words just don't do the feeling justice. I have related the feeling to numerous people. A few said, "What's the big deal? I see it that way all the time." But most reported the same past perceptions as me: The sky is big, but flat and unchanging, rather than deep, vast, and alive. To see it otherwise felt quite profound.
(Next trip report: 1996_0810-12_SummerWeekend.htm)