NIGHTWATCH
I’d like to try and share with you an everyday experience of my youth that has stayed with me vividly all my life.
I am a cadet on a merchant ship somewhere in the tropics. Most nights, it is part of my duty to spend a couple of relaxing hours as watchman at the bow of the ship.
It is quiet, and I am as far away from the rest of the crew as is possible, and most of them are asleep anyway. The only sound is the swish of the bow wave breaking through the water some forty or fifty feet below. There is a gentle warm breeze caused by the progress of the ship, but highly refreshing after the heat of the day; a time for reflection and quiet thoughts. My only duty is to ring the ships bell if I see the lights of a ship appear, one ring for starboard, 2 for port, 3 for dead ahead, but that is unlikely, as there may not be another ship for hundreds of miles.
If I peep over the bow, I look down into the water, full of sparkling phosphorescence, sometimes flashing like myriad miniature pinpricks, caused by microscopic life. Impossibly close in front of the white bow wave swim a couple of luminous dolphins, weaving rapidly to and fro. Somehow, they transmit their feeling of joy and exuberance to me, and my cares evaporate.
Though the night is dark and moonless, it is far from black. I can see maybe 20 miles in all directions to the dark line of the horizon, but above it is the most wondrous and beautiful sight in the world, for the sky is filled with a hundred times as many stars as can be seen on land. There is not a square inch of the sky that does not contain stars, a few bright and coldly brilliant, but many thousands more of a softer and warmer light, sometimes white, but others with subtle hints of yellow, red, orange, and blue. Whole galaxies of stars apparently drift like mist over the heavens. My constant reaction over the years was simply to be continually awestruck at the unimaginable vastness of the universe, which is infinitely greater than my comprehension. At first, there was always a feeling of loneliness, of total insignificance, of being lost in space, which puts ones silly problems and cares in context. But soon, the feeling alters, and rather than be adrift in a sea of emptiness, the heavens change from being untouchably far away into a close, warm, dark velvet blanket of security that wraps around you, bringing a feeling of womb-like utter safeness and comfort. I feel an integral part of nature; I belong, and have a right to be here, and that whatever my future holds, long or short, it will be in accordance with nature, and I shall always exist in one form or another, a feeling I have never lost.
