Day Brings Night and Brightness

By Jerry W. Davis

My love of all things celestial can be traced back five decades, to late-night forays in the foothills above my small Wyoming hometown.

Dad piled us kids into his old pickup and drove to the highest point in the hills, where we had a clear view of the sleepy town below and brilliant stars above. He pointed out the planets and stars but mainly we looked up in wide-eyed wonder, talking about the vastness of space and time, space travel, and the potential that we were not alone in the universe.

When I moved away from home and began my life in Idaho, my eyes were always drawn skyward on dark nights and my thoughts often returned with gratitude to the wonderment Dad instilled in me. His voice resonated in my head, “Look up, Jerry. Imagine how vast the universe is. Imagine all the worlds that exist beyond Earth. Imagine . . .”

The first night at my cabin in Garden Valley twenty years ago, I sat under the stars with my own young family. We stared upward, trying to fathom the complexity of space. I felt my children’s excitement and awe, and we bonded in a new way under the night sky—a family drawn closer by the immensity of it all.