Kindred Spirit

I don't know who this woman is or where this was taken but she and I are kindred spirits. She's talking about how her grandfather would take her and her siblings out to look at the sky, and he'd teach them about the stars and constellations. The same thing happened to me with my parents, who took my sister and me out on the lawn to watch meteor showers when I was around four, and by around kindergarten I'd become a sky-watcher. It's a source of endless fascination, but you have to spend a little time on it to really see anything, or even know what to look for. This lady gets it.

 It took YouTube, specifically a site that tracks meteors, to make me realize how many others like me there are out there. Over the years I've only had a handful of friends who enjoy looking at the sky as much as I do, but I met a lot of people who are way more into it than I am. One guy built his own observatory. He built a structure with a door and cut a big hole in the roof. He took a big dog house with a window in the top, cut a matching hole in the bottom and mounted it on wheels that fit into a track he mounted around the hole, so it could swivel 360-drgrees, and installed a telescope inside. That made my day.

 Meeting so many people who are into the sky has been a real blessing. There's something about these people that I can't put my finger on, but I've known some of them for up to five years, and they all seem like really good folks. For people who have their heads in the clouds as it were, they also have a pretty good grip on things happening on the ground, and for the most part they aren't baffled by the bullshit like so many others. Looking into the sky, especially at night, really puts things into perspective. Like music, cooking and a couple of other things, looking at the sky is one of my "Zen" things, and it's very conducive to pondering on stuff. 

 I don't suppose I'll ever get to meet this sister, at least not in this life, but she's one of me and I like her. I wouldn't mind sharing a blanket and watching a meteor shower with her, and hearing all about her grandfather. I bet I'd have liked him. I'm just glad to know there are more like me. Eyes to the sky.