Night Sky Over Connecticut

I’m parked on the street tonight. We’re letting our freshly resurfaced driveway take some time to breath.

I pulled the key, shut the lights and stepped onto the pavement. It’s dark up here. We have no streetlights. By midnight, when I get home, most of the house lights are off too. Even the moon is gone, not rising again until tomorrow afternoon.

The sky was ablaze with bright stars from horizon-to-horizon.

I walked in the house, went upstairs and found Steffie watching TV. “Come outside,” I said. My guess was she’d beg off, but she didn’t.

Carrying, but not wearing a pair of sneakers, she followed me down the stairs and out the front door. “Where’s Orion’s Belt,” she asked? That was my constant sky reference when she was growing up. I’ll bet it’s the only constellation she knows. I didn’t see it.

I went back in the house and turned the porch light off. Now it was really dark.

I pointed to a high flying distant jet. It was ‘at altitude’ and flying north. I told Stef it likely was a transatlantic flight, heading out from JFK or another major airport. They often take a path which brings them far enough east that we get no noise, but close enough to be seen.

We stood on the freshly sealed driveway looking up… and then… the sprinklers came on! Holy crap, we both lost five years as we jumped at the sound of water spraying from the sprinkler heads.

It’s at times like this I think back to our dog Ivy. She and I would walk outside every night about this time. It always upset me Ivy never looked up. She missed seeing the sky.

It was so beautiful tonight even Ivy would have known.