Before I say anything else, I want to be clear about one thing: I hate camping. I cannot have a false perception projected upon me as an “outdoorsy” person. 

Camping, as a concept, has never really made sense to me. We are fortunate enough to have homes. We built them specifically so we wouldn’t have to sleep outside and are sheltered from the elements. And yet, there exists an entire industry dedicated to convincing people to pay money to temporarily abandon those homes and larp as homeless. My friends are customers of this industry. I am not. And yet, somehow, last week, I was in a tent 20 minutes from my apartment, which is the part that really gets me. 20 minutes. I could have been in my bed. My warm, comfortable, bed. Instead, I was on the ground. 

But alas, I love spending time with my friends more than I hate camping. So I guess that justifies my decision to go. 

It was fine. I’ll give a 7/10. I got a little sick. 

My favorite part was stargazing. We tried as a group, but everyone was a little drunk and a little giggly and collectively incapable of staying quiet for more than 42 seconds (we timed it), and even that felt like an achievement. 

Although I was the tiniest bit annoyed (I told them, quoted, to “shut the fuck up”), I didn’t push much because I was planning to go back to the waterfront later that night to stargaze anyways. And I did it. I haven’t stargazed properly in a while. I spent all of last semester in Singapore, where the light pollution is so bad that at some point, you forget that stars even exist. And then I came back and it was too cold to be outside at night. Point being, this was the first time in a long time I actually looked up and saw them. 

I thought about the fact that I used to think about really important things while stargazing. Freshman year, one of my close friends and I would go to the middle of the football field late at night and just lie there. We’d play music sometimes, talk, not talk. And then we’d walk home, a ten minute walk that somehow took like 2 hours I stg. Those were good times. I didn’t know they were good times while they were happening, 

So I’m there, outside this tent I didn’t want to sleep in, twenty minutes from my apartment, and I’m waiting for the profound thought. One that feels somewhat significant and enlightening. One that’s worth getting my ass drenched by the wet sand I’m sitting on.

It never came.

Instead I thought about my friend and the football field. And then I thought about the Big Dipper. I could see it (or at least I think so) but I genuinely couldn’t tell which stars were stars and which ones were maybe Jupiter or Venus or something else. I’m pretty sure I know Orion’s Belt. Three in a row. That’s the entirety of my astronomy knowledge. 

And…that was it. That was the full contents of my brain under an infinite sky on a clear night. A hazy memory and a constellation I couldn’t fully identify.

I think that’s fine though (I hope). Sometimes the sky is just the sky and your brain is just your brain and the moment doesn’t owe you profundity just because the setting is right for it. Or maybe this is just major cope because I’m afraid I’ve regressed into a simple minded being.