A dark country road

It started off as a fairly typical night. The wife had gone to bed and I was sitting up at the computer, bored, not ready to sleep, watching the hours crawl by.

My spirit creature, apparently

I was feeling restless, and decided that instead of pacing around the house and waking up my wife, I would take the puppy for a walk. She (the puppy) was more than happy with this idea. It was nice, the town gets very quiet after midnight and walking around was peaceful.

Rather than settle me though, it struck me as we were strolling around that the night was nice and calm, and the sky was remarkably clear, I decided to go for a drive and do a little stargazing. I stopped at home, quietly grabbed my keys and the old lady (our other dog), and headed out.

I grabbed a sandwich at that wonderful 24 hour Canadian institution Tim Hortons, cruised a few miles out of town into the middle of some farmland, dropped the tailgate and set up for a little picnic with my ladies.

Listening to the coyotes howl

It’s amazing how the sky opens up for you when you are away from all the light pollution. Sitting there quietly in the middle of an empty country road, watching the dark outlines of the dogs exploring the fields around me, was peaceful.

Town, and it’s intrusive lights, is miles away

I brought out a pair of binoculars and explored the sky for awhile, sitting there on the tailgate of my truck. There’s really nothing quite like the night sky to make you feel small, but in a good way. Small clusters of light and vague patterns of stars are brought into focus and really pop out at you even with just some basic optics. Especially out in the country, where your night vision stays intact, you can really appreciate how full of stars the sky actually is.

I don’t have the tech or patience to do a long exposure so here is a stock image of basically what I was looking at

It was an excellent way to kill some time and reflect for a little bit. Of course, the dogs love it anytime they get to go for a truck ride, and more so when they get to be let out to run a bit. All this is easily achieved for us night owls, and well worth taking a look. Next time you can’t sleep, consider heading out of town for a little while and taking it all in.

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