Sky

For three weeks, traveling through three countries, we were shown one marvelous thing after another unexpected thing after another stupendous thing. Too many to remember all at once.

Today I’ve been thinking about the sky. On the plane to Melbourne from LA, the young Aussie guy sitting next to me spoke simply and eloquently about lying in a sleeping bag in the Outback looking up at the night sky, that there’s just no other sky so deep and strong and beautiful anywhere.

So I watched the sky along the way – day and night, in all three countries. I wasn’t disappointed. On clear nights the stars looked bigger, brighter, closer and at the same time shining from a deeper setting, than I recalled seeing before. When we were out of towns in the daytime, the sky was big and usually interesting. And of course, in the Outback the sun worked its own changes on the landscape.

Here are three pictures, one from each country. I didn’t try to capture the night sky, so I suppose you’ll have to trust me on that.

I took the first picture just at sunrise at the Ayers Rock Resort, close by Uluru. The photo is just as it came from my camera, except that it’s been reduced in size.

The second picture was snapped on our road trip from Christchurch to Queenstown in New Zealand. The clouds are reflected in one of the heart-stopping blue mountain lakes we saw along the way, in an area molded by glaciers.

And finally, Fiji. Each night we were there, I sat on the patio outside my room, in darkness and silence, and gazed at the stars, and listened to the water. Maybe it didn’t quite equal the Australian Outback star display, but you couldn’t tell it by me. The third picture is an early morning snap of the sky and water at the resort in Fiji.