I was experiencing problems sleeping at night at the cottage, waking often, and unable to fall back to sleep. Not that I wasn't tired after a day of various types of activities, just seemed that I couldn't quite surrender to full sleep. I'd read abed as usual until I felt it was time to put out the bedside lamp, and would fall asleep readily enough. Trouble was, I couldn't stay asleep.

At one point overnight Sunday, I got up and pushed the bedroom curtains aside. What was revealed to me was a dark and starry night, of a brilliant quality I'd rarely seen before. The stars were so startlingly apparent in an endless sky of dark blue velvet. Had I been an astronomer I would have yelped for joy. No light pollution to speak of, to interfere with splendid views of the night-time sky. We were located, after all, outside any town, nestled within the soft bosom of a forest within a cottage with all the amenities we required, and no lights were on, anywhere, but for those shining ever so brightly from the heavens.

Of course, I've seen this type of thing before, on occasion, and had my breath taken away with the wonder of it all; observing a night-time sky unimpeded by the presence of civilized lighting, the kind of lighting that dispels darkness and with it, an adequate appreciation of the heavenly bodies that share the universe with our Earth.

When we would canoe-camp in Northern Ontario wilderness areas such as far interior stretches of Algonquin Park, for example, or when we were engaged in alpine camping climbing coastal mountains in British Columbia, all with our biologist son who can never be satiated with outdoor adventuring. On those occasions we would sit out quietly together, the three of us, on rocks close by lakes, listening to the waves lap on the shore and looking above at the proliferation of impossible numbers of stars comprising our Milky Way. Occasionally bats would fly by and we would hear their squeaks as they indulged in night-time hunting forays. There were rustles in the underbrush, and quiet murmurings indistinguishable for the most part, but representative of the nocturnal activities of the creatures of the forest who come alive at night.

The shimmering presence of a sky decorated with heavenly bodies, the occasional shooting star, the gradual progression of satellites making their brightly distinct way across the sky, all of it enthralled us.

At the cottage, I made my way back to bed, groping along in the dark, moving Riley over to enable my re-entry into the bed that seemed so crowded unlike our much larger one at home, and mused over the wonders of the universe. I composed a poem in my head that gave me great satisfaction, knowing that my literary muse had also been impressed by the spectacle above.

Came the morning, and try as I might, the poem could not be recalled; transitory, evanescent, a mystical, magical thing of the night.