This fascination for the heavens finally led me to take an astronomy course in my senior year at U.M.S.L. I was eager to explore the universe, but my vision was forced to a different paper horizon: Contemporary Astronomy, by Jay M. Pasachoff. What a complete disappointment. I had wanted to capture the stars, not classify them, to tour the planets, not theorize them, to surround myself in nebulae, not suffocate myself in a litany of numbers and symbols. I had yearned for the romance and mystery, and instead, I had to settle for the science and math of the universe.

For longer than I care to remember, my gaze was directed nearer to the ground. My career as an English teacher and soccer coach kept me firmly entrenched in the universe of words, grades, and fields. But last summer, after an exhausting stint of teaching summer school, I reluctantly conceded to go with Becky Blake to Salem, Oregon, to visit Mike and Sue Duggan, life-long friends since junior high school. We travelled all over Oregon, and again I felt the lure of the sky, beckoning with a force greater than gravity. Driving up Highway 101, Becky and I stopped as often as time would permit to pause and marvel at the scenery. But it wasn't until we spent the night with Mike and Sue in Overlook Motel in Lincoln City that I regained my awe of the night sky. The night was clear and the beach nearly deserted. We stood barefooted, listening to the susurrant crash of the waves spilling gray foam on the darker gray shore. Below, dwarfed but somehow integrated with the horizon, I strained against freezing winds, entranced by a meteor shower. Music would come closer to explaining how I felt, but I am not a musician, and the syllables that might have been words faded faster than the ephemeral colors dancing and streaking across the endless sky. It was painful ecstasy. The first and most spectacular meteor bloomed a dull orange about an inch wide and plummeted oceanward for what seemed a yard long in indelible swiftness, burning forever beyond my retina into the fluid spark of my synapses. I stood on the shore, not wondering about primitive man, but standing next to him.