This is a view of the night sky directly facing south from 45.295706, -92.737949 on August 10th shortly after 11:00PM. What you are seeing is forty-two minutes in 18 seconds. 

After living for so long in the city I forget that the night can be so magical. I forget that the stars are doing what they have done since the creation of our universe and will continue the same way into a future that is seemingly eternal. Oddly enough, it is louder here at night than on my street in the city; crickets, frogs, bats, and other nocturnal hearts in these parts have plenty to say, every once in a while a bird chirps in its slumber from a distant tree. 

In Minneapolis, I can see constellations, but in the darkness of this country I can see infinitely more celestial formations as well as the luminescent dust billowing in the midst of it all.

To witness such splendor is revitalizing, and yet, slightly disorienting. We are alive, and yet made of dust. The same dust that is twinkling and rushing from the center of a big bang 14 billion years old. Considering relativity, if we were watching its creation from the outside, would it be so astronomically astounding? 14 billion years in less than a blink of an eye; galaxies created and fading like fireworks in the summer night.

I'm so small that I cannot even sense the stars are whirling above my head. This moment feels like a gentle request from god to slow my mind and heart enough to see it all happening before my very eyes--to connect with the past and the future. I know languages and poetry but my being tonight can only speak "Wow!"