Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools

SKy
amelia parenteau
north stonington, connecticut, usa
The first time I saw the Milky Way I was at a slumber party with my
three best friends. We had just learned about identifying
constellations in science class, and I was proud to be able to pick out
Cassiopeia without a moment’s hesitation. The grandeur of staring into
the Milky Way struck me and all of a sudden I grasped the infinity of the
universe. I was truly looking out into space, and wondering what my
significance could possibly be as I sat here, upon this earth, one
The grandeur of staring
into the Milky Way
struck me and all of a
sudden I grasped the
infinity of the universe.
fourteen-year-old girl among a
preponderance of stars?
My next interaction with the Milky
Way came when I was visiting Crater Lake
in Oregon with my family over a summer
vacation. We had read the guide books’
accounts, certainly, about how magnificent
the stars were at Crater Lake, but we had
no real concept. After dinner, we stepped out onto the balcony at the
lodge, and it was like stepping out of a space shuttle into the cosmos. It
sucked the breath out of me. The stars were so bright, so perfectly white
and brilliant and twinkling and dense that I was too overwhelmed to
think of anything besides their blinding array. There it was again, the
Milky Way, cradling me in this net of a universe.
All the stars have stories behind them. Greek and Roman mythology
lend greater meaning to the twinkling heavens. In my studies of Latin,
I have internalized these stories so that viewing the splendor of the
constellations from my backyard is akin to returning to the pages of a
well-loved child-hood book. The stars map eternity. What will my story
be, my contribution to the sweep of the stars?
The sky does not only speak to me at night. It is equally splendid in a
richly colored sunset or sunrise. I witness these on evenings at the beach,
or across my snow-filled yard, when the last rays of daylight streak the
glittering vastness before me, a dazzling tangerine and pomegranate and
raspberry sunset. Language can hardly document the celestial display,
but the enticement of a sunset makes it impossible not to try. The
science is lost on me – I do not need calculated explanations for the
array before my eyes. The sky conjures words, not equations. Poetic
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