There we were, driving down the empty highways, when it dawned on us that we have not seen a single car or truck in either direction, for over an hour.
We were in the middle of the Kaibab National Forest in Arizona, on our way to see the Sunrise at North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was about four in the morning and suddenly saw an incredible sight, enough to elicit a sharp cry of joy. So we pulled to the side of the road, turned off the car engine and all lights.
Wow!
Pitch dark. The kind of darkness we’d never experienced before. No manmade light of any kind. It felt so weird, as if we’d stepped off the ledge into an abyss. We had to touch the car handle just to make sure we didn’t simply float away. And the heavens were full of magnificent light!
There was no thought then… so no thought of making a photo either…. even this fantastic photo does not do justice!
Were these stars? It appeared as though overhead there were all these innumerable balls of white fire. The Milky Way appeared in unprecedented glory. It was so close, we could almost touch it. Every point of light in the Milky Way was clear. Even when we had the family reunion near Fort Davis McDonald Observatory a couple years back, we didn’t see the Milky Way quite so clearly.
For a while there, we were actually a part of these stars. We weren’t glancing at them from distant Earth, we were actually an integral part of the galaxies. Does that make sense?
Hard though it is to put it into words, we experienced a sense of oneness. One with each other in that vast, dark forest. One with every piece of the universe. No longer with an identity as a life form, as a human, as a primate, as a citizen of this or the other nation, as a male or a female. No longer with an identity distinct from the whole.
As there was no thought, there was no attempt made to photograph this bliss. We’ll steal a NASA photo – maybe this is akin to what astronauts experience when they step out of the shuttle for an extravehicular foray?
For a long time after this, there was nothing to say. We were so immersed in our silence together, with just an occasional shared look, a knowing smile, that words were simply not needed. In fact, it took us all these days even to begin to write about this.
Image Credit: NASA
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Cover Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash
