There is something we have being doing that may become a ritual. The thing that Lance and I do on Friday nights.
When the sky is clear and the stars are calling, it goes like this:
We load mattresses into the back of the truck, blankets piled thick against the winter cold, a flask of hot chocolate wedged somewhere safe, a bag of marshmallows tucked in beside it, and then we whistle up the five-dog pack, who come running. Riley hops of course as he is the three legged one. These fur-kids know exactly what this means. A field trip is underway.
We drive further up the mountain in the last of the light, dogs piled in around us, the truck climbing slowly into the dark, until we find our spot and switch off the engine and just breathe for a moment before climbing into the back to lie down.
I have always been a sky girl, a star chaser, and nights like this are exactly why.
By the time we are settled, blankets pulled up, dogs curling into whatever gaps they can find against our legs, the Swartberg has gone from purple to black and the first stars have already begun to arrive. One of us, passes the flask, and marshmallows go soft and sweet between sips of hot chocolate, and for a while there is no talking at all, just the sky filling in above us, star by star, like something being lit from the other side.
The Karoo has been teaching me, on nights like this, about how close -close actually is.
Because out here, away from every streetlight and screen glow, the stars do not simply sit up in the sky the way they do in town. They hang low, impossibly low, like they are reaching down through some great net of light strung across the dark, close enough to lean up and be kissed by. And since the rains, they have been sparkling harder than I have ever seen them, as if the whole sky had also been washed clean and given something new to shine through.
It is winter here now, and the night air bites in that clean, dry Karoo way, and when Lance and I speak our breath curls up between us like little wisps of smoke, there and gone.
And that, every time, makes me think of Jane.
Jane, our darling friend, who read tea leaves and swore by them, who smoked her Camel cigarettes like it was a philosophy and not a habit. Jane who was tougher than nails wrapped in kindness, who has been gone from this side of things for a while now but does not, if I am honest, feel very far away at all.
She and Lance are still writing their book together, slowly, the way these things go, her voice coming through from wherever she is now, about what it is like on the other side of all this. I believe their book will find its way into the world one day, in its own time.
But out here, on the back of the truck, dogs curled warm against our legs, hot chocolate going lukewarm in the flask, I do not need the book finished to feel her close.
The wisps of our breath curling up into that low, star-strung sky feel like her cigarette smoke used to, drifting up while she read someone’s fortune in the leaves at the bottom of a cup. And the stars reaching down the way they do feel like her, too, and feel like everyone else we love who has gone on ahead, still close enough to lean down and touch us if we only lie still long enough to notice.
Here is what I am learning, my love, up there on that mattress with the dogs breathing slow around us-
The ones we love do not leave. They simply change how they say hello. A curl of smoke that isn’t smoke at all. A star that seems to hang lower than it should. A cold night that somehow feels held.
We stay out long after the hot chocolate becomes cold and the marshmallows are gone, the pack of us breathing together under all that light, until the cold finally wins and sends us home.
But something in me on the other nights finds my heart is still up there, lying in the back of that truck, watching for the next wisp of smoke, the next low-hanging star, the next small kiss from someone who loved us and has not, not really, gone anywhere at all.
May you find your own net of light this week, and may you feel, in whatever curls up close to you in the dark, that you are not nearly as alone as you think.
SharynAnn
There is something we have being doing that may become a ritual. The thing that Lance and I do on Friday nights.
When the sky is clear and the stars are calling, it goes like this:
We load mattresses into the back of the truck, blankets piled thick against the winter cold, a flask of hot chocolate wedged somewhere safe, a bag of marshmallows tucked in beside it, and then we whistle up the five-dog pack, who come running. Riley hops of course as he is the three legged one. These fur-kids know exactly what this means. A field trip is underway.
We drive further up the mountain in the last of the light, dogs piled in around us, the truck climbing slowly into the dark, until we find our spot and switch off the engine and just breathe for a moment before climbing into the back to lie down.
I have always been a sky girl, a star chaser, and nights like this are exactly why.
By the time we are settled, blankets pulled up, dogs curling into whatever gaps they can find against our legs, the Swartberg has gone from purple to black and the first stars have already begun to arrive. One of us, passes the flask, and marshmallows go soft and sweet between sips of hot chocolate, and for a while there is no talking at all, just the sky filling in above us, star by star, like something being lit from the other side.
The Karoo has been teaching me, on nights like this, about how close -close actually is.
Because out here, away from every streetlight and screen glow, the stars do not simply sit up in the sky the way they do in town. They hang low, impossibly low, like they are reaching down through some great net of light strung across the dark, close enough to lean up and be kissed by. And since the rains, they have been sparkling harder than I have ever seen them, as if the whole sky had also been washed clean and given something new to shine through.
It is winter here now, and the night air bites in that clean, dry Karoo way, and when Lance and I speak our breath curls up between us like little wisps of smoke, there and gone.
And that, every time, makes me think of Jane.
Jane, our darling friend, who read tea leaves and swore by them, who smoked her Camel cigarettes like it was a philosophy and not a habit. Jane who was tougher than nails wrapped in kindness, who has been gone from this side of things for a while now but does not, if I am honest, feel very far away at all.
She and Lance are still writing their book together, slowly, the way these things go, her voice coming through from wherever she is now, about what it is like on the other side of all this. I believe their book will find its way into the world one day, in its own time.
But out here, on the back of the truck, dogs curled warm against our legs, hot chocolate going lukewarm in the flask, I do not need the book finished to feel her close.
The wisps of our breath curling up into that low, star-strung sky feel like her cigarette smoke used to, drifting up while she read someone’s fortune in the leaves at the bottom of a cup. And the stars reaching down the way they do feel like her, too, and feel like everyone else we love who has gone on ahead, still close enough to lean down and touch us if we only lie still long enough to notice.
Here is what I am learning, my love, up there on that mattress with the dogs breathing slow around us-
The ones we love do not leave. They simply change how they say hello. A curl of smoke that isn’t smoke at all. A star that seems to hang lower than it should. A cold night that somehow feels held.
We stay out long after the hot chocolate becomes cold and the marshmallows are gone, the pack of us breathing together under all that light, until the cold finally wins and sends us home.
But something in me on the other nights finds my heart is still up there, lying in the back of that truck, watching for the next wisp of smoke, the next low-hanging star, the next small kiss from someone who loved us and has not, not really, gone anywhere at all.
May you find your own net of light this week, and may you feel, in whatever curls up close to you in the dark, that you are not nearly as alone as you think.
SharynAnn
