The sky is our common ground
You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. —Sandra Cisneros
Last week, the Northern Lights were visible in New York and New Jersey and in many other places around the country where they are not usually seen. Much to my chagrin—and to be honest, my downright regret—I did not find myself at the right place or the right time to view them firsthand. Nonetheless, friends and family who know me well and understand my deep longing to witness this breathtaking phenomenon, sent me photos and shared with me their stories of good fortune at catching something so magical and so rare. And the icing on the cake—my social media feed was awash with the colorful spectacle of nature in its most breathtaking glory, friends from around the block and around the country posting stunning shots of the Aurora from their back yards, their office building parking lots, and the roofs of their buildings.
These photos filled me with a deep awe and a kind of inexplicable joy—not just because of the elusive and spectacular surprise of seeing something so rare—but also because they are a reminder of a shared experience with my friends—and really with the world at large. There is a gentle goodness apparent when all the world pauses to look at the sky. It reminds me of our shared humanity and of our common affinity for something so amazing and so completely out of the ordinary realm of human control.
Aww, the Northern lights. In a world that agrees on very little, we can all agree that they are worthy of our full attention.
And this really got me thinking about the sky. Its sunrises and moonrises, its eclipses and comets and meteor showers; its autumn afternoons of soft grey-tinged clouds against a startling blue sky. And, honestly, is there anything better than the shared ritual of a good sunset? If you’ve every been to Mallory Square in Key West or on the Luis I Bridge in Porto, and you’ve seen everyone stop what they’re doing so that they can move toward the perfect spot from which to witness the sun’s last plunge into the horizon, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Or on a beach in Oregon or California, whether there are five or five hundred people, you will most likely see every single one of them literally stop in their tracks and face the Pacific Ocean at the magical moment of the sun’s full descent. Few things in our world are met with such clear consensus as a beautiful sunset; no matter what else we’re doing, it’s not quite as important as the magic unfolding before us.
I love that. And, yes, I’ll admit to being a particular kind of sky lover. I am infinitely interested in the sky and spend an inordinate amount of time looking up. Of course, I love its beautiful sunsets and sunrises, but I am also fascinated by the clouds, the shifting light and the infinite mystery of the night sky. Not only do I almost always stop to notice what’s happening in the world above, but I often try to photograph it—to savor it and celebrate it—or talk about it, or write about it, or just say a simple prayer of thanks for it. I have a handful of close friends who feel similarly and devote a great deal of energy and many Instagram posts to the wonders of the sky and, truth be told, whatever other manipulative things algorithms do, I am infinitely grateful for the fact that they somehow put those friends’ photos in front of me first and often. My social media feed is sky abundant. From a friend, who takes the most breathtaking photos of the moon I’ve ever seen to another who takes time lapse photos of the milky way, and yet another who captures the sweetest sunsets over the George Washington Bridge.
And that is why, last night, as I was taking a last look at my phone before giving myself to sleep, I saw something lovely—something that actually inspired this post. My dear friend, Leann, who lives 3000 miles away, posted a gorgeous picture of the moon rising over Crater Lake National Park and I realized that only a few hours earlier, I had taken a similar picture of that very same moon, in that very same position, just rising above my little corner of Manhattan. Hard to say why this caused me such delight, but I think it was the idea that although we are far from each other, on the other side of the country actually, we are both often looking up at this shared space—this common ground we call the sky—and somehow this makes everything and everyone feel just a little bit closer and a little bit more connected.
Photo: William Thorne (Bayhead, NJ)
