We Interrupt This Lengthy Blog Silence for the Following Moment of Simple Beauty

The sky above my house is very clear right now. I was just in the back yard, and I looked up to see a truly beautiful sight. All the leaves have vacated the trees in my yard and the surrounding ones, and the sky is so clear I can see more stars than I'm used to seeing in the city.

The view above me had a background of that deep-blue black which is the color of the darkest urban night sky possible without a power outage. The rest was either dark lines of naked trees or bright dots of light that started the journey here long before I was even thought of.

The stars were not only above the trees, but they were shining through them--since the leaves have all given up all of their summer duties, including the minor one of making stars have to work so much harder to accomplish this. I've only ever been able to pick out few constellations, but bits of Orion were recognizable through one tree (at least they were once I saw the rest of him poking out above the tree). I was struck by the simplicity of this beautiful scene.

It made me wish I had a better camera. It made me wish I knew how to take paints or charcoal or pencils or markers and re-create the memory of that sight.

But mostly it made me stand there longer than I probably should have, given the cold.