by Leath Tonino

Well, okay, it was Friday night, this was last Friday night, that’s why I could afford to let go of time like that and really just let go, like lose track of the track or whatever and just be out there all of a sudden looking up and around at stars, constellations and, yeah, I guess there were bats scooting around, I remember seeing them too, kind of thinking “bats” without fully thinking it.  

You know, it was weird but also not weird to come to like that and realize, hey, it’s about time to head home, to have it sneak up on me like that, because I’ve been spending more and more time out there, butt to the stony beach, eyes on everything and nothing, thoughts hardly anywhere at all, I’ve been doing that a lot and, no, I haven’t gone off quite like that and just sort of woken up to the darkness, but still, things like that happen out there sometimes so it wasn’t all that surprising, wasn’t all that weird.  

Mostly, really, I was just enjoying myself because the stars were, dang, just so many, dang, it was nice to be in their company, that’s how it felt, that’s what I was enjoying—like the stars were buddies, like old high school friends, that kind of feeling, like they’re here even though they’re far away, that’s what it was like. 

That’s not what it was like, really, but I don’t know what else to call it.  

Like friends.  

Something.  

Anyway, okay, it was getting late, not late late, only maybe nine, but late enough, and I was telling myself, hey, call it good, head home, come back tomorrow, but it was tough because the cool valley air had sunk down with the darkness and was sitting right where I was sitting, and so I didn’t really want to move, because there was that warm pocket of air in my clothes so long as I didn’t move, it was that kind of thing where you realize you’re cold only once you budge, so I just didn’t budge even though it was time to go.  

I sat there another hour, who knows how long, just me and my starry pals, just hanging out, it being Friday and all.

And that’s when I think maybe I first noticed it, just around then.

The dipper was big in the low west, like upside down on the mountain, like dumping out on the horizon, and I had been looking at it for a long time without even realizing, doing the old not-all-there stare, and it was pretty much the moment I realized I was looking and had been for some time—it was right then, like a second coming awake moment, first the nighttime having fallen all around me, and now this hunch that something was off.  

To be specific, I think the last star in the handle of the dipper was off.

As in, like, gone.  

That’s what I thought at least, or maybe felt, maybe both, and so I tried to count, but you know how it is with the dang dipper, it’s all confused, or for me it is, you count out from the corner of the pot or is it the handle only?  

What makes up the handle?  

Is the corner star part of the handle?  

I thought it was four, that’s the image I saw in my mind, trying to remember what it actually looks like, see it, then count it in my mind.

Four is what I was seeing, whether that includes the corner star I don’t know. 

That’s not the point.  

The point is that I knew at first for certain that it was off, then second-guessed myself, still just sitting on the stones, but now aware that I was looking, totally awake to where I was and even awake at the tiniest hair-on-my-neck level that the faintest wind was starting up, though I couldn’t hear it because the creek was burbling in my ears.  

And thinking, now I was definitely thinking too, just one thought, but a pretty big one, and I was aware that I was thinking it.  

I second-guessed but as I did, at the same time, I was still remembering the first feeling, the feeling of being certain.

That dipper I could see inside, the remembered one, it was what it was and I didn’t make it up or put it there, it was the one there when I went looking for it, and however many stars it had in its handle, they weren’t as few as the stars in the dipper in front of me, dumping out its cup of darkness onto the mountain. 

It was black now—the mountain was black, blacker than the sky.  

Okay, so that's that, my little story, sort of weird but again maybe not weird at all, who am I to say?

Still, I can’t quite shake it, can’t quite get it straight, whether it was me or the stars, whether everything was normal and same as ever or whether everything had slightly changed and something was lost. 

And like I say, I don’t even know why I’ve been spending so much time out alone by the creek, I just have. 

Because I like it, I guess.

Because where else would I go?

Leath Tonino is a freelance writer living in Colorado. He's the author of two essay collections about the outdoors, most recently The West Will Swallow You (Trinity University Press). His work appears regularly in Orion, The Sun, High Country News, Adventure Journal, and Outside.