Still Need Stars When You're Wishing at Night

You know how certain memories stay with you, the sense of them so disctinct that it can bring you back to a moment in time as though you're still right there? I can remember 4th of July, 1995, with absolute clarity. The year I was 9. I was running along the beach with my friends, waiting for the fireworks to start, and I looked up suddenly and found myself so stunned by the night sky I got dizzy and fell down. I wasn't sure what was different; it certainly wasn't the first time I'd star-gazed. I just knew that the stars suddenly looked like they were right on top of me, close enough to touch, and a clear night in New Hampshire can still bring me back to that exact moment. To this day the first thing I do when I get out of the car up there is look straight up, just to have that feeling again, that the sky and all its mysteries are endless and very, very close.

I've seen the sky over Massachusetts in every mood and every season. I navigate by it; it brings me home. I measure the weather and the coming storms against its colors. I crave it when I'm so unfortunate as to be far away for too long. I learned later that it looks different from the NH sky because NH was and remains largely uninhabited and entirely devoid of major cities (have you ever seen Concord? neither has anyone else). When I went to Mexico I was shocked - it wasn't that the sky seemed closer, just that it was so full, and it went on forever. You could see stars behind stars behind stars, and it continued in every direction for, as near as I could tell, eternity.

In Washington, D.C. you rarely see the stars at all. But it does make for some very cool moons, larger than they should be, entirely alone in the night sky.

So what are the stars going to look like in a city that more often than not doesn't have electricity in most buildings, on a continent that mostly lacks for artificial light? What constellations can you see there during the winter rainy season? I try to follow Orion when I can. Not only is it a widely referenced romantic notion in many of my favorite works of literature, but aside from the Big Dipper and, obviously, the Scorpion, its one of the few constellations I can accurately identify in a pinch.