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You know and I know that winter is far from over, but after four days of February thaw and water running through the streets it sure feels like spring. The snowpack gives way, even to small dog feet walking in the yard. The pillows of snow on the roof of the garage are no longer fluffy and they look like they need to be replaced. All day long the tuxedo cat paced by the back door, having been let out once to enjoy the sun, but deterred by the cold resonating off the snow in the yard when he tiptoed off the porch.
By the time thoughts of dinner came around it had been decided that we were having steak sandwiches utilizing the second half of the package from last night’s Korean Bulgogi Steak Bibimbap rice bowls that Lucy made. We could cook them in the broiler or… I could fire up the grill for the first time since last year. The call of the flame and the chance to enjoy a last pint of Octoberfest outside made the choice obvious.
I stood waiting for the grill to come up to temperature and let the steaks marinate for a few more minutes in just a bit of balsamic vinegar, soy sauce and black pepper. It was a later dinner for us and the night sky was full of stars. I had only a light jacket on and it had started to go crisp but I was very comfortable. The stars above Ely this time of year are incredibly bright against the thick inky black sky. Brighter than walleye eyes flashing out of the dark lake waters if you’ve ever been out fishing at night.
Orion’s belt is the obvious draw to the eyes and all the stars in that quadrant seem to compete for brightness, though Sirius in Canis Major, the big dog, outshines them all. Rigel at the foot of Orion and Betelgeuse above are in sharp contrast to his sword and this is only because of the distance that separates the massiveness of the Orion Nebula at the sword’s origin from the “brighter” stars and us. Up above this you can see Mars and Jupiter and of course, for a while now, over to the right, Venus has been lighting up the sky for some time.
I put the steaks on, leaving the flame high, planning to flip them after about three and a half minutes. Then I went back to looking up. Ever since I was a kid I’ve thought about reaching up, reaching out to those stars. In Minnesota, in Ely, without the light pollutants, they look so close, they pulse and seem to beat out a rhythm of their own against the dark. They seem reachable. Travelable. The galaxy loses perspective and vastness as night closes in. It’s not that we seem bigger, it’s just that the imagination grows and my dreams of what might be possible begin to expand.
Flip the steaks, find the best flames, pour over the rest of the marinade to keep them moist and put down the lid. Watch the temperature rise and note the time. Supposedly on Friday there will be a parade of planets and we’ll be able to see seven beginning with Mars up high off the shoulder of Orion, then continuing to our right across the sky to Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, Neptune, Mercury and Saturn just below. By the time you read this it will have already happened, in the dark, whether we notice or not. These stars, the names, places, always bring to mind Roy Batty’s speech that Rutger Hauer playing the Replicant leader, improvised at the end of Blade Runner. I’m struck with the knowledge that there are great stories happening that I know nothing of, stories that will be, “lost, like tears in the rain.”
The steaks were done and I took them inside to rest. I left the stars outside with the dark sky and the remnants of an early and untimely spring. It was a nice respite. My thoughts strayed now to our smallness, our tininess in comparison to the Earth we live on, to the sun we orbit, our sun to the largest star in the Milky Way Galaxy and that huge red supergiant star which is as minuscule as we are as individuals when compared to one of the largest known quasars in the Universe, Tonantzintla 618. Unreachable. Like the depths of every problem swirling around us in the world today.
Have you ever considered that might be why there’s such a sharp contrast in size and distance from us as individuals and our home planet? Have you considered that God might have designed us knowing that we cannot help but reach for the stars and reach for things unattainable, unfixable, unsolvable, and inevitably fail. Yet we continue, we don’t give up, we keep imagining, keep trying, keep looking up. I think the reason this is so, is because we have the ability to effect change in our own orbits. We have the ability to touch someone right in our own community with the warmth of the sun, with our own warmth of inspiration, faith, kindness. When nothing else seems to help or fix things or work, we can shine a little brighter than our surroundings and take time to share the unseasonable warmth of a February thaw with them.
Much like holding a cat in the afternoon sun so they can enjoy the dream of summer to come. Keeping their feet warm while they mimic birdsong and shudder with delight at a Hairy Woodpecker landing in the fork of the crabapple tree, at the calls of sparrows and the ever present eclectic chorus of the European Starlings on the line.
