Brush Strokes

Dearest Grandchildren

From a journal entry taken on a backpack trip with your Emmi: After dinner, some wine and chocolate, we washed the dishes and hung the bear bag. It was about 8:00 and Marguerite, being lazy, decided to lie back down in the tent and read. I, on the other hand, was bound and determined to stay awake and watch the stars come out. I stretched out on my mat and covered myself with my sleeping bag and waited. I closed my eyes for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the wilderness, opened my eyes and focused on the sky, searching for stars. It took a while, but the stars finally started popping out, one at a time, until it was black-ink dark, and I could make out the cloudy mist of the Milky Way. So, so, so very beautiful. I must write something about the Milky Way and the stars someday. I have ideas, but nothing that can do it justice. Frankly, it will likely take a much more talented writer than I, I fear. But perhaps I should do it anyway since we all see it differently.

I stayed outside until about 10:15. When I joined Marguerite in the tent, I turned toward her, and looked through the open mesh of our tent just in time to see a falling star streak from horizon to horizon, north to south across the valley. It was one of the brightest falling stars I have ever seen.

Brush Strokes – January 8, 2021

New evidence suggests there are two trillion (2,000,000,000,000) galaxies in our universe, of which the Milky Way – where we live – is one. Of these galaxies, you can see nine (9) with the naked eye. There are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy (probably more like 200 to 400 billion). Of these stars in the Milky Way, we can see about 5,000 with the naked eye. Roughly speaking, there are one septillion (10²² to 10²⁴) stars in the universe, probably a whole lot more, and the universe is still expanding. Our sun is but one of those stars.

From those first moonless nights, when I lounged in a horse pasture with my friends in Ironville, eating green apples with chunks of salt from the nearby horse lick, gazing up beyond our bubble, and wondering just what that “cloud” of light above us was, theorizing the way six-year old boys do; to when I continued to imagine with my children while lying on the shore of a mountain lake, struggling to answer the most fundamental questions: “Daddy, where did the stars come from?” “Daddy, why are we here?”; to now, as I stagger out of my tent in the middle of the night to do what old men do when driven by the only possible thing that could coax them from a warm sleeping bag, and look again into the night sky to resume the musings of that wide-eyed six-year old boy.

In the not-too-distant future – as the future is never but just around the corner – we will get you a backpack, lace up your boots, I’ll carry the big pack, like I did with your mother and uncles… at least for now. Hike this trail. Set up the tents on this lake shore, in this clearing, among these old-growth firs, in the cradle of these craggy peaks. Here, on this granite shore, roll out your sleeping pads. Leave room for mine in the middle – surrounded by those most important things. Lie down, snuggle in – it’s cold – get comfortable and be patient, for there is no more important place to be.

Watch the daylight slowly fade, pursued by the deepening skies. Mesmerized, you might want to sleep, but don’t. Keep looking. The stars will deliberately emerge, one-by-one. One moment nothing, then a point of light, then another, over and over and over.

Close your eyes. Clear your brains. Breathe deep of the cold, clean, earthy sky.

Open your eyes now to the dazzling depth of the deepening heavens and the silky cloud of celestial flame that emerges from the top of that rocky cliff, stretches its spidery web of firelight across this inky-black vastness, and descends into this same lake. That very same unchanged brush stroke from when your mother, uncles and I swam those short years ago; from when little boys laid in horse pastures, imagining.

Just let it happen, my grandchildren…

This Milky Way Galaxy – my home and yours – is but one spider-silk-width stroke of the artist’s brush on the infinite canvas that is the painting of the universe. The companion that has escorted me throughout my life. Consistent. Patient. Wise. It offers to me its eternal wisdom when I search for clarity on issues most profound, while inviting me to also consider the significance of the infinitely small, the unobserved.

Breathe slowly, my little ones. Focus on nothing, on everything, those things unseen. Capture the echoes; tremors of the mountains; rush of wings; hush of the wilderness; your beating hearts; those points of light so distant, the closest of which took four years at the speed of light to travel to this night, to this shore, to your eyes. Let your mind merge into the cloudy expanse before you and find only us, only you. It is like submerging your solitary, naked form into a clean mountain stream, where the rush of frigid water embraces and cleanses away those earthly chains hiding just beyond perception.

Emerge from that numbing embrace with your feet still on this earth and stand – an infinitely small pinnacle in the vastness of this inexhaustible universe. And with breath subdued and heart muted but for life sustained, lift your hand, your heart, your gaze, unrestrained, to this immense expanse; feel the artist behind the spider-silk brush stroke – the living soul of the universe.

The Milky Way, Starry Night, glacial lake, mountains, stars, stones at your backs, ghostly silence infused in the life of the mountains, teasings of nothing…of everything, the vastness of the infinite cosmos – nature’s repose. And with eyes wide open, breathe deep, infused with the simple realization of gratitude for the opportunity to feel – to imagine, to ask, to breathe, to love…to be.

And feel too, the artist: the hand of God, the soul of Nature, the infinite Expanse, Spirit – all fitting names; all fitting reasons.

Oh, my grandchildren, I have reached into that cold abyss, into the magic of nature’s repose…and prayed for one more touch of my father’s hand…just one more…beginning so many, many years ago. I have cried into that night sky, alone on the mountain tops, asking again and again to these very days – let me hold his hand…just one more time. Let him reach out to me from this nature’s silence. And it is now, at this moment, with this paragraph incomplete, that I understand the peace I feel from giving my own children my hand, my love, my words, my guidance, my wisdom, my failures, my insight – “Daddy, why are we here?” – and perhaps it is my hand that has reached out from the darkness…just one more time. Surrounded by the cold of night, the warmth of the universe, the love of us.

I come to this mountain, a humble man – a humble little boy – to behold the cold quiet, the stars, the meteors, and watch them leap into the cloud that is the Milky Way. I come here respectfully, to marvel at the depth of this eternal universe and what my role is, if any. And I stand here – an infinitely small pinnacle in the vastness of the open universe, but not alone – never alone – because I have successfully taught others to stand, to climb a mountain, and to imagine, the way men, women, and little boys in pastures do. And they too can reach over and hold the hands of those they love. They are forever by my side, as I am by theirs, as he is by mine.

In this universe, there are two trillion galaxies – each a spider-silk-width brush stroke. Each an echo of the beating heart of time, given names that suit our needs: God, Universe, Nature, Spirit, the thing of life itself. Each star is a molecule, as inconsequential, as magnificent, as a single grain of sand on all of earth’s beaches. In this infinite space, planets huddle, and on a very, very few, life, self-aware, ponders beyond itself into the living, breathing, expanding abyss and tries as best it can to answer the simplest question: Daddy, why are we here?

Yes, my loves, that’s what I see.

Love,

Baba