I wish I could put into words how amazing it is to look up at the sky right now. I know I am good with words, but no writer cold do this night sky justice. There’s one poem that does to an extent; one that I will keep in my heart after tonight. “The Learn’d Astronomer”, I believe. He talks about an astronomy lecture and how uneasy it makes him due to the majesty of the stars outside—some things science can’t explain, and these stars are one of them.
Being in pitch black in the middle of the Amazon is, simply put since flourishing words cannot remotely grasp their majesty, the most amazing sight possible. I was getting changed on the back of our deck when I looked up—half naked, I was looking into Heaven itself. I’ve never seen so many or such bright stars as I looked at from my behind my hammock in that moment. For the first time I could see the color difference in each of the galexies and constelations, lines through the sky outlining different worlds and lives. There is no light from cities effecting the natural sights, the stars simply fade to the black of the trees, mixing sight in with the sounds of drums and singing from a village hidden among the dark smudges of horizon.
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
-Walt Whitman
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