There’s nothing like a night under the starry skies of the Big Bend of Texas. The sky goes on forever, the milky way is more than a vague memory, you can see the Pleiades and the Seven Sisters with the naked eye, and if you’re lucky a star will fall from the sky and you can once again pretend you’re a kid. It’s a restorative vision if you care at all about understanding your place in the universe.

Yesterday we looked at that sky after a day of walking through Santa Elena Canyon, taking a slow trip through geologic time. We marveled at the tall walls, the slow moving river, and the general coolness of being deep in a tall canyon with such an ancient river. We played games with echoes, and stopped to take pictures. We finished off the day with the modern things of a beer and barbecue in a local joint in Terlingua.

This is the fifth year for your little annual excursion to the area of Big Bend. The group shrinks and rises, flowing like the river with the lives and schedules of the participants. I am late to the discovery of Big Bend, but maybe it’s one of those things that was only meant to come at the time that it came, a big space to fill the big void of the missing wife, a timeless place to remind me that my life or any life is less than a fraction of a fraction of second in a story of place where life has gone on for eons.