h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

14 January 2004
I blame the night vision goggles for tonight’s reflective mood. It is not their fault they were merely doing what they were designed to do, revealing the hidden. The terrain, pitch black and invisible to mere mortals exposing itself in eerie green hue to my godlike eye. Nothing new under the moon tonight, the same rocks trees buildings that have always been there, no unwelcome visitors crashing my party. Then it happened, I looked up.
In the desert so much of the night sky is revealed even to the naked eye it is enough to make a city boy cry. This has been the only place on earth that I have been able to actually see the Milky Way, its creamy serpentine beauty arcing across the sky. Meteors, awakening from their frozen slumber to shine for the tiniest fraction of their eons long existence in brilliant brazen glory. I have been overwhelmed by the beauty and harsh purity of the landscape more times than I care to count.
I feel myself growing more spiritual by the day. Emotionally I have, in war, preformed exactly opposite as conventional wisdom says I should. I came here pensive, negative and frustrated. I will leave here relaxed, optimistic and feeling more blessed than I ever have in my life.
This is the point where the night vision makes its entrance. They function simply by taking the available light in the visible and infrared spectrums and amplifying it something like 100,000 times. All of the wavelengths are then transformed into a green vision of the world. In a land where I have seen more stars than I could have imagined looking up can be dangerous.
I look to Orion. The hunter, with his well-defined stellar body was the first constellation I could ever recognize. I can find the big dipper as well and usually that is about it. The familiar stars that make up the outline of his body were shining as brightly in the sky as ever. The goggles gave me an insight to him; his body has substance veiled from our mortal eyes. Thousands of stars fill in the rough, familiar sketch. It is almost a cliché feeling to have in such a situation, but a great feeling of perspective settled upon me.
There is so much more than my tiny little existence. It of course wasn’t the first time I had taken note of that fact, but it was the first time that the thought was comforting and not lonely. The small problems of my personal life, the fact that so many people in this city wish to kill so many other people, and will probably try it in the near future, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear proliferation, politics, women, money all slipping into the great void of space. The void that hides so much. The void filled with stars, so many that somewhere life must be harbored. Somewhere life goes on, as it does here or not like it does here. Great civilizations or tiny microbe colonies, but life nonetheless. I felt a bond with these undiscovered cousins, and a hope that the greater purity will replace this base greed that we are afflicted with.
It was such a wonderful feeling thinking how the largest adversities that loom above us fade into the insignificant paltry things they really are. You wonder if people would stop and take just one minute to discover Orion’s secret if they would finally be able to understand the futility of all the unnecessary tension we create for ourselves. Why on earth would anyone want to cause mass destruction anyway? The world is beautiful and the universe will in its due time swallow it back up again, we should enjoy it while it is ours.
The goggles continued to perform their function of revealing the hidden, of granting clarity of sight in the dark, just not in the way the manufacturer ever intended. Orion had revealed his secret to me then he showed me my own. I wondered for a minute what would the world be like if a simple pair of goggles could reveal a human’s character to others as easily as Orion’s.
How often in life would we use them? Would we fear the truth? Would we find that there really is no evil in the world? That people are all the same, scared, lost and confused and feeling insignificant in the deepest recesses of their souls? Would we finally realize that our hatred of others is really no more than a misguided hatred of self? Perhaps one doesn’t need the goggles if you just know how to look. Until then Orion and I will never look at each other the same way again.

Hope and beauty is found in the most unlikely spaces.
Except for the heart of man , it is most likely you'll find it there if you look.

I live in Colorado and I used to be into mountaineering.
The best part of having to get up in the middle of the night was the sky. Amazing to look at the milky way and realise we are part of it! Hard to grasp.

It took some getting used to seeing satellites in the night sky.

Can you write like this all the time?
There is a weekly paper here. I have nothing to do with it but they may be interested in some of your writing if you are. It's

Goodness! I don't believe this.

Every clear night I have look up to the skies (I live in the countryside, so we have big sky) and salute Orion. He reminds me, too, of my insignificance and of my fortune to be here.

For 3 years I lived close to, and sailed on, the Great Barrier Reef. Now there is a really Big Sky - probably close to what you're experiencing in Iraq. Orion was always there, hanging out towards the northern horizon. We slept on deck, so each night he was our guide and our protector and we watched his path across the sky. In a place like that it is inevitable that you realise just how small you are, just how coincidental it is that you're here at all and how delicate life is. But Orion will still be there, long after everything that we are and everything that we do has been forgotten.

These days, I see Orion in the southern sky and know that he's also keeping an eye on my treasured memory. And on you, as it turns out.


Frenchbean

Three years sailing on the great barrier reef. That must have been a wonderful experience.
Abbi the English language and myself get on reasonably well, I write often, but I am more of a creative sprinter. I have these flashes of inspiration, flurries of activity and then nothing. I thought for a while that I might try my hand at writing for money, I just don't have the stanima for it.

It's great stuff SF: Abbi and I obviously appreciate it. So let's hope your current sprint lasts a while!

Yup, I can recommend the GBR if you want peace, open space and unbelievable beauty...


Fb

I am glad you have the capacity to enjoy the experience and share it.