Stars

 

Monday night is Joel's night to throw logs into the wood boiler that heats Miracle Lodge, camps main building.  It is a five minute job as long as the fire is still going well.  The maintenance staff does this job early each morning around 6:30 and again in the afternoon at about 2:30.  The 10:30 nights have then been assigned out to various non-maintenance staff persons with Joel having this duty on Mondays.

 

The boiler system was installed this past summer by volunteers as an alternative to burning fuel oil which is much more costly.  Right now we are burning birch trees brought up from The Valley. It took, all the guys pitching in, two days to cut the semi-truck long trunks to boiler length and then split them if they were too big in diameter to fit through the boiler door. 

 

 So last night, Joel and I walked up so he could stuff in some logs.  It was a clear night but dark since the moon was not up so Joel used a flashlight to illuminate our way on the snow-packed road.  The wind was cool, our snow pants swishy, and the snow very crunchy under our boots.  It was a great night for a walk. We chit-chatted all the way up, pausing just a bit to go around a section of road where ice is building.  Once up at the little boiler building, smoke still wafting from the chimney, I watched as Joel fed in large sections of birch.  Two were still so big they wouldn't fit through the door and he heaved them aside.  With the boiler as full as it could get, Joel closed it up, turned off the light and latched the building door. 

 

The smell of smoke was still lingering on us as we started our walk back down the road to home.  The lights surrounding the lodge were bright and Joel did not turn the flashlight on.   As we rounded the tight corner at Alpine Camp all light was suddenly gone.  It was dark.  Joel quickly turned on the flashlight until we looked up and saw the stars.  He shut the flashlight off and we stood there for a long time amazed.  There were tens of thousands of stars, some as small as dust that must be millions of miles away, one much brighter than the others that stood out so much it must be a planet, clear patterns of them that must be constellations we wished we knew the names of, one that blinked every ten seconds or so that must be a satellite.  The longer we stood, the more stars we could see. It was crazy the shear number of them.  It was beautiful. 

 

We finally started walking again.  This time in the dark holding each other's gloved hand.

 

Isaiah 48:12,13  "I alone am God, the First and the Last.  It was my hand that laid the foundations of the earth, my right hand that spread out the heavens above.  When I call out the stars, they all appear in order."