Gateway, Summer, 2019, FINAL

An Old Dark Sky Night
Looking back, I didn’t realize how important that dark night sky was. The
sky was pitch black, like a giant piece of black butcher paper, pierced
with holes that the light shone through. There must have been a billion
stars that night, maybe trillions. I was probably nine years old that night,
and I stood upon an arch in the middle of a red rock desert with my Dad and our
dog by my side.
I was one of the lucky ones who was blessed with a rich childhood full of
campfires, dirty jeans, a camper with an old pump faucet, where, as a kid, I took
baths in an old green bin that fit perfectly in the camper’s sink.
Lucy, our old Ford F150, was orange and had white lace pinstriping down her
sides. She took us to some of the most amazing places. Old eight track tapes blared
as Don Williams and my Dad sang, “Lord, I hope this day is good” and my mother,
refusing to ride in the truck any longer; stood along the side of the dirt road
convinced that the road was too steep and too dangerous to travel.
The family dog, Chance, bounced and jumped up-and-down in the back of
the camper, excited for whatever adventure lay ahead of us that day, making our
camper, which was already too big for the truck, appear to be incredibly unstable
to most passersby.
That old truck, old camper and ancient red rock desert took me to places of the
heart. Places where memories were made, and the dreams of a nine-year-old girl
would come true.
We had camped there often, the place we camped that night, and I longed to
hike to the top of the arch, which was one of the camp’s many attractions. As I
think back, it probably wasn’t that big but to nine-year-old Nicole, it was giant.
It may as well have been Mt. Everest because I truly believed that from the top of
that rock I would surely be able to touch the stars.
My parents, mostly my mother, I suppose, had raised me to have a love affair
of sorts with the stars. She was a Carl Sagan fan and loved to study the sky. We
camped in the middle of nowhere that evening, built a campfire, made dinner, and
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