Taking The Time

        It was quiet back in the woods on this night. We had had two Great horned owls, one on each of our first two stops on this latest survey, but after that, nothing. With little action to distract me, I was spending a great deal of time just listening, and looking at the night sky.

        There was a new moon, so we were not able to see all the stars that had so dominated the sky on a couple of previous outings. Still, it was clear, so clear that I could see three or four of Jupiter's moons with my binoculars - something that I am not often able to do. And I could make out several of the more prominent constellations, beginning of course, with Ursa Major - the Big Dipper.

        One bit of data that I am expected to record, should we happen to hear an owl, is the direction from which it is calling, so I have gotten into the habit of checking for the position of the Big Dipper and from it, the North Star. With that located I don't have to fumble around with a compass and flashlight in order to determine the direction to the bird. Actually though, I have always had the habit; it gives me a sense of direction even on the darkest nights.

        As I mentioned earlier, this was a quiet night - at least for owls. We could hear great numbers of Wood frogs, and Spring peepers, smaller numbers of Mink frogs, and a couple of other species that I have yet to sort out, but no owls, and therefore, no data recording, apart from the time and mileage of each stop. And so I stared at the sky, and let my mind wander. That was when it occurred to me, once again, that simply taking the time to do this - just look at the night time sky - is something that our ancestors obviously did regularly and thoroughly. They did it enough to figure out the patterns of the constellations, to note the changing positions of those constellations and the planets that wandered about in their midst, and a great deal more beside. And they did it, for the most part, without telescopes or binoculars, or those guides to the night skies that I can consult whenever I want to figure something out.

        In our time of television, of the Internet, and a hundred other distractions, we so rarely take the time to do something like this. Somehow it seems like a waste of time, even though we should know better. As a consequence, we have also lost a lot of our ability to concentrate on something for more than a few minutes, and, as a further consequence, on our contact with the world around us. And I am no better than the vast majority of people in this regard. My first impulse on a night of few owls, such as this one, is to start thinking of all of those other things that I could be doing. But then, I take a deep breath and decide to look, to look and wonder at the immensity of that sky that is always there, but that we so often forget. When I do, I recapture, if only for a few minutes, that sense of awe that really should be a part of our daily experience, but that we so often sacrifice to the expediencies of this modern, and so often shallow world of our own making.