I got home late last night, and was relaxing in my cushy chair with Fast Company, possibly my favorite magazine (tech, innovation, business, great graphics, what’s not to love?) when here came Abby in her jammies. Sometimes the kids have trouble staying in their beds at night so I was preparing to respond when she said, “Mom said maybe you could take me out to look at some constellations.”

Well, nothing’s more important than fatherhood. So I set aside my magazine, we slipped on our shoes, and out we went.

Of course Honey had to come too, with her bark-first-investigate-later eagerness, and immediately sprang the motion-detector light above the driveway. So Abby and I went to the north side of the house and made out the Big Dipper, which she can see from her bedroom window. Polaris was hidden behind the tall trees, but then the driveway light went out, and we moved back in front of the house.

God made the stars visible to teach man his place. The Milky Way stretched in an arc directly over our heads across all the visible sky, from Wanderer’s Peak in the east to the west behind our roof. It silences me to contemplate the cloudy edge of our galaxy, as I stood in the dark holding hands with my daughter. There are no more thrilling sights on earth, I think, than black conifers stretching up toward a starry sky. In that majestic distance one looks across more miles than there are pine needles on our land. I pointed out Casseopia, and the Pleiades rising above Wanderer’s, and a few bright spots I believe are planets. Then, when the wind had chilled us, we went back into our cozy house and went to bed.

If there is no other justification for living in the country, the night sky alone might be enough.

(PS. I couldn’t find a starry-night image I liked for free, so I built this one in Photoshop. Don’t look too closely; it took me about 12 minutes.)