2:50 AM – Cerro Tololo

I beat my alarm by 10 minutes. I dress in layers, mechanically. Later today we will visit the observatories, but right now, I want to go outside and look up.

I want to try to tell you how dark it is outside, here on the Summits in Chile. My first surprise is that I can see. I don’t need a light at all. The starlight is enough. I walk from under the awning and the sky unveils itself. The CTIO dome makes an ominous siliouhette on the horizon. In 30 minutes, my nightvision will fully activate.

Stars, stars everywhere. I’m looking out into infinity. Someone told me it gets much scarier to imagine that you’re looking down. I concentrate on the idea that I’m standing on the ceiling. 

The streak of the milky way is exactly overhead. It’s there. It’s obvious. It’s not a “maybe I see it, maybe I don’t”. I live in a galaxy. I’m illuminated by starlight. I turn toward the east and see the Magellanic clouds. They’re huge! Big, amorphous, glowing balls. Bigger than the moon, they take up so much of the sky, even when they’re 200,000 light years away. 

I’m standing in the parking lot. I have my binoculars with me but I don’t even pull them to my face. I’m spinning in circles. My night vision activates. The shades of the galaxy begin to fill in. 

Then the Hotel’s heating unit clicks off. The fan revs down, and I realize i’m in total silence. No crickets, no dogs. No wind. No sounds. The sky is silent, I can’t believe it.

My ears acclimate to the silence, and I now notice the hum of the observatory in the distance. I sit behind a parked car to shield myself from the noise, and experience a new magnitude of silence.

I sit. Time disappears. I stare without thinking. Is this the peace that we all once experienced?

Across the parking lot, the hotel’s compressor clicks back on, and it’s droning hum tugs awareness back to my surroundings. 

The universe is always like this. Silent, dim, and infinite, it doesn’t ask anyone to look or listen. Light and noise pollution, even small amounts, blot it out. In towns and cities, it is totally erased.

While standing on the ceiling, I see what’s been stolen from under our feet.