“Those are satellites.”

I did not, and do not, know if the old man in the Caterpillar hat was telling me the truth or not. But I wanted to believe, at twelve, that some part of me could see something so far and high and fast and utterly removed.

My Florida wardrobe was no match for North Carolina Novembers. I knew that space would be colder still, but my secret wish was for this middle school class trip to never return home, whatever that was, but instead be only a stopover in a journey that would take me somewhere far and high and fast and utterly removed.

“You can’t see ‘em back home. Light pollution. But up here where nobody goes, you can see everything.”

Everything.

I guess that’s what I wanted to see. Everything new, everything hidden, everything invisible. And for a moment, I could. For a moment, I was up there, not on some mountaintop, but in space, hurtling through the eternal dark that I’d just learned was not as dark as I’d feared.

What I wanted was Escape Velocity. Enough orbits around a given center of mass, picking up speed and perspective along the way, get the angle just right, and you’re off.

Or sometimes the center can’t hold. The star explodes or implodes, the planet collapses. Mass becomes less of a rule and more of an observance. Our hero has to leave and venture out into the galaxy with powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men. Or something.

I did not and do not really have a plan. I suspect that real adults do, but I’m no longer sure I want to be one of those.

My journey through the night sky has never been a straight line anyhow. Just a series of fits and starts under my own steam, fighting against the centripetal tug of heavier things. Up close, jagged and jerking and violent.

But from some mountaintop somewhere far below, a gentle certain arc.

There were things I thought were important or unavoidable or indelible or unstoppable. There were things I thought would define me forever. So I orbited. For years, for forever, for as long as it took.

But where are they now?

Sometimes I didn’t even register their cooling and retreat into black dwarves. Sometimes I rode the supernova. Sometimes the release felt like rebirth. Sometimes the dismissal felt like death. But there was always, is always, a new system and star and planet and pull.

Somewhere a child gasps at the beauty of blazing trail through night sky.

Somewhere down the mountain in a VFW hall there is a contra dance. Callers guide the steps, and dancers move from partner to partner and reel and laugh and maybe fall in love.