Magic Happens...

At night I lie and look out my window at the stars. The skies here are thick with stars one never sees in the city. During the Perseid meteor shower, earlier in August, I took my sleeping bag out to the chaise lounge and lay in the dark. At first the meteors were infrequent, but by midnight they were more or less constant, one or two every three or four minutes. Even after I went inside I saw several meteors streak across the sky.

Somehow this brings back a memory of a July evening almost 30 years ago, when we camped in a park in Oklahoma with the boys. We'd been living on an island in northern BC for years and were on our way south for a family reunion. We were camped among huge oak trees, it was humid and still and as it grew dark stars came out among the trees as well as in the skies.

Robert Frost wrote:

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

Our northern boys had never seen fireflies before. It was as magical as if fairies had arrived in the garden. Magic happens unexpectedly and leaves a glow.